


thrones of vermillion

by selinawrites



Series: the life and times of steven grant rogers [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (again), Bucky Barnes & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Endgame, Falling In Love, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, Los Angeles, M/M, Minor Scott Lang/Hope Van Dyne, Moving In Together, Moving On, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Road Trips, Shmoop, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-03-07 06:13:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 31,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18867376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selinawrites/pseuds/selinawrites
Summary: Steve gazed off into the distance. "Well... after I put the stones back, I thought, why not try some of that life Tony was telling me to get."“And that life Tony was telling me to get… it led me back here.”-It's 2023 and Steve is older, but not by much. He always knew he was a man out of time, but the time he belongs to is now the 21st century.





	1. leave your demons at the doorstep

**Author's Note:**

> hi! i really want to write a cute little short story 100% self indulgent and fun, thats gonna mean short but sweet 1k long chapters, fluffy ooey gooey definitely ooc steve and bucky (since, if the russos can screw over their character development... that means i can too?) and just a bunch of cute stuff that the dynamic duo deserved :)
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Bucky Barnes knew something was wrong from the way his best friend’s face twisted at the sight of him.

Perhaps wrong was the wrong word.

Bucky Barnes knew things would never be the same, that’s for sure.

 

Since he woke up in the year 2023 he was still getting his bearings, but the one jarring thing that he (and half the population) had to get a grip on was time travel, and the abject reality of it.

Bucky was staring head on at his best friend, at  _ Steve _ , and he knew things were on the precipice of change.

 

Steve had the cautious, yet gratuitously fiendish glint in his eye that only came about when he was about to do something that was incredibly selfish, impossibly unlikely, or both. Steve was going to go  _ back _ . Whether he was going to stay in the past, Bucky couldn’t give a definite answer, and it made something unsavory stick to the back of his throat.

 

He had just gotten Steve back, the only memory he  _ had _ , and Steve was going to leave him. It felt selfish, and Bucky couldn’t be selfish when he was internally berating Steve for being selfish as well.

 

Steve smiled back at Bucky. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.” He said, and the words are decades old. They’re words from a past life. Steve might as well been a ghost, because those words didn’t exist in today’s world, not until now.

The response rolls off Bucky’s tongue, and for some reason he feels like it’s the end of an era. “How can I? You’re bringing all the stupid with you.”

 

Bucky wants to say more, do more. He wants to tell Steve to wait for him because he still doesn’t know what colour was the sketchbook Steve never let go of. Bucky wants to ask Steve if he could come with, he wants to plead for Steve to stay, because if Steve can go back to the time he was supposed to grow up in, Bucky should too.

But he doesn’t say any of that, because Steve wraps him in a hug both soul and heart crushing. Unbeknownst to the other, the both of them try not to cry.

Steve smiles, but it never quite reaches his eyes. Bucky gulps down, because there's only one thought swirling in his mind and it very might well be the most selfish thing he had ever thought of.

 

Bucky doesn't know how he'll be able to remember anything with Steve. Wakanda didn't give his memories back, not entirely. They just reversed the Hydra conditioning so that he would not revert back to his assassin tendencies as the beck and call of Russian trigger words. He knew how to wrestle with the Winter Soldier man in his mind, so he was more Bucky than not most days. But Wakanda couldn't give back memories, that was the stuff of fairytales. Memories were passed on through stories, eyewitness accounts, and conversation.

 

How was Bucky ever going to remember anything if he doesn't have anyone that remembers with him? 

 

Bucky swallows hard, his throat drying out faster than he can salivate as he watches alongside Sam Wilson as Steve Rogers picks up Mjolnir, his shield, and the Infinity Gauntlet. Once more, for the very last time, he was going to do one more mission because nobody else would.

He saw Steve give him a small smile, and Bucky smiled for his sake.

 

Bruce Banner said some words to Steve, indicating that the time travel process was ready to proceed. Bucky didn't hear the tailend of the spiel, as with every growing second he felt like he was being submerged underwater.

 

When he was being tortured by Hydra, they electrocuted him. They froze out the man inside him. They chilled him to the bone and chased away any warmth he had left in him. That was pain.

Seeing his best friend and only memory being whisked away was torture, but it was an unfamiliar torture. It was like being in an aluminum pot with the boiler at low heat for hours. It was being burned from the inside out. That was pain, it was fire instead of ice, but pain nonetheless.

 

Bruce tinkered around with buttons and switches as he prepared to bring Steve back into the present time. "Bringing him back in five, four, three, two, one..." he trailed off, as Bucky felt the dread creeping up his spine, the inevitable gut feeling that he so desperately wanted to be wrong about.

 

He turned to the lakeside, and there Steve Rogers was, sitting on a bench.

 

Bucky couldn't do it, he couldn't face his friend. He could make countries cower at his feet, but he couldn't do this. He was a coward, but at least he had his pride.

Sam Wilson took a step towards Steve, as Bucky leaned up against a tree stump to eavesdrop.  
  


Steve was older.

 

But not by much.

 

Sam looked at his friend, who couldn't have been more than thirty. Really, he hadn’t aged a day if the circles under his eyes hadn’t been so prominent. ""So did something go wrong, or did something go right?" He said, and the duo braced themselves to hear about all the trouble Steve encountered whilst skittering through dimensions.

 

Steve gazed off into the distance. "Well... after I put the stones back, I thought, why not try some of that life Tony was telling me to get." 

There was a long silence, and Steve smiled. He really looked like he hadn’t aged at all, it would’ve only been Bucky and Sam who noticed the differences.    


“And that life Tony was telling me to get… it led me back here.” Steve said slowly.

Sam chuckled and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at work, then?” Sam joked, the two of them knowing they’d be up to their crime fighting shenanigans in no time.

“Hopefully not too soon. I think I deserve a vacation.” Steve says politely, standing up and smoothing his pants down.

Sam laughed, mumbling mostly to himself. “If anyone deserves one it’s you, Cap.” He said, as Steve walked over to Bucky with a smile.

 

“You came back.” Bucky whispered softly once they were out of earshot.

Steve smiled. “Course I did, Buck.” He said, nudging Bucky’s shoulder.

“Why?”

Steve was at the edge of saying something, but swallowed down on his words at the last minute. “Well for one, they don’t have the internet in the ‘40s.” He said jokingly.

Bucky smiled with a mournful shake of his head. “Where to, then?”

Steve grinned back at his friend. “Anywhere you want.”


	2. strangers with memories

Bucky smiled back at Steve as if he had just been handed the world, and Steve can’t help but return the smile, even if the sinking feeling in his heart grows wider and wider.

Steve was never planning to return to 2023, and by the astonished look of Bucky’s face upon his arrival, Steve was made acutely aware that Bucky this, too.

Steve was planning to abandon Bucky, and he hated himself for it.

 

He arrived during the cold and rainy spring of 1946, on a quaint road in a quainter part of Oxford called Foxcombe Lane. She had a large house with an iron gate, an ancestral home that Peggy promised to take Steve to. Steve recognizes the house even if he had never visited it. It was the place that made him sick with homesickness he couldn’t quite place on bracingly cold winters and desolate SHIELD missions.

The iron gate is already slightly open, and Steve walks inside and stands at the wooden door. He knocks crisply twice, waiting a beat before he hears someone unlocking a latch from the other side of the door.

 

And there she is, Agent Margaret Carter.

Steve smiles back at Peggy, at the one whose face he kept close to his heart every day in a strange new world he could never truly get the hang of. He smiles at Peggy as if he never left.

 

“Agent Carter,” Steve begins, voice low and full of warmth. “I believe I owe you a dance.”

 

Understandably, the questions seem to roll off Peggy’s lips. Steve takes Peggy’s hand as she leads him towards the living room as questions tumble off of her effervescently.

“Steve? How are you alive?” 

“Someone found me in the ice.” Steve said softly, intentionally eschewing the fact that they found him in the ice seventy years later.

“You’ve been gone for seven months. People pronounced you dead! Where have you been all this time?”

Steve grimaced at this question, for he had been gone for seven  _ decades _ , not seven months.

“I’ve been travelling, but I could never stay away from my best girl, now can I?” Steve said, as if he had been here all this time.

 

As if there wasn’t a history between them, Steve answered question after question, telling half truths that were more lies than not. 

Peggy gave Steve a mournful smile and turned to put on a record. Steve smiled, but the rest of his body tensed. Steve could recognize the  [ record ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuOoBvM0Vb8) anywhere, it was the song that Nick Fury was playing the night he visited his apartment. It was the song that was playing when Nick Fury told Steve that S.H.I.E.L.D was compromised, that someone一Bucky一had tried to kill him.

 

It was the song that played when Steve first felt Bucky’s presence in the twenty first century. For all Steve knew, it was  _ their  _ song. 

Peggy grabbed hold of Steve’s hand, and Steve couldn’t pull away. There was just no way to simply say;  _ Peggy, I’ve come from the future and this song plays when the director of an organization you haven’t found yet comes to visit me.  _ There was just no way. So Steve tenses, but he dances.

 

Bucky taught Steve to dance, and he taught Steve how to step in the ways he moved with Peggy right now. They stood in their too small Brooklyn apartment in the moonlight, wordlessly swaying without lights or music. (For, what would the neighbours say? Two bachelors,  _ dancing  _ together?)

Steve shook Bucky out of his head, because out of all things he should be thinking of Peggy, who was in his arms and finally with him after all those years.

He thought about how easy it would be to undo his mistakes, especially in a time when everything was within his grasp. Steve could have everything he wanted, and more.

Steve couldn’t move, as he held his future in his arms一if he was just brave enough to take it.

He thought of Tony, and how even under dire circumstances he still managed to live a life with Pepper Potts and have a child. He saved the world, and then some.

And so, if Tony could go back in time and right some wrongs and still come back with a wife and kids, shouldn’t Steve be entitled to the same as well?

 

This is what Steve wanted all along, wasn’t it? This was his endgame. Peggy and him, they were soulmates cut from the same cloth.

He closed his eyes and dreamt of a world like that. Getting a menial job because minimum wage could give him a house in the suburbs. Carrying a bouncing baby in his arms as Peggy cooked dinner. Laughing as they went on movie theatre dates leaving the kids with the babysitters. Raising a testy teenager, crying when they go off to college. Growing old together, remaking the world.

But Steve opened his eyes, and it would never be like that. He would be plagued with nightmares of things therapists would never understand. He would smile and nod when JFK gets assassinated一and during 9/11. He could never live a normal life, not with a life lived between the two of them.

 

Steve opened his eyes and the first thing his pupils landed on was a calendar. By his calculations, Bucky Barnes had just begun brain conditioning by HYDRA. 

There were no bouncing babies and movie theatre dates for Bucky in the 1940s. Steve would be able to lie down at night, but would he ever rest knowing Bucky was just a few countries away having the brains blown out of him? If he never becomes Captain America in the 21st century, he would never save Bucky. Bucky would live on in the 21st century, doomed to be forever young. He wouldn’t have opinions on reality TV and the memes that Peter Parker sends like he does now.

Steve staying in the 1940s meant abandoning Bucky in the 21st century, both in this timeline and the one he just came from. Would he ever be able to live with that? Knowing he left Bucky while he was still an assassin without memory and leaving Bucky when Thanos was finally defeated?

 

The music ended, and Peggy smiled up at Steve. Steve smiled back, but he still felt jilted. He looked at Peggy and kissed her chastely as he made his way to the door.

Peggy looked at Steve, taken aback. “Are you not going to stay, Steve?” She asked, and Steve could  _ feel  _ Peggy’s soul in just that one question.

Steve smirked and rolled his eyes, taking the question in stride even if his heart was hammering. “Oh come now, Agent Carter. You’re telling me there isn’t a fella on his way here who knows you’re waiting at home? A pretty lady like you without a man in your life?” He asked, when he already knew the answer.

Peggy’s mouth flattened into a thin line as she thought carefully about what to say, and in her silence came the answer. Steve knew deep in his heart一it wasn’t fair.

 

It wasn’t fair to him and it wasn’t fair to her. He was given a supernatural ability to go back in time, to redo mistakes and not make more.

In Peggy’s reality, she fell in love. She had one son and one daughter. She founded S.H.I.E.L.D, she saved lives. In her reality she lived a long and fulfilling life filled with a son and a daughter and grandchildren. She had nephews and nieces and she was  _ happy _ . She died in her sleep, and the nurses swear she was smiling.

 

In Peggy’s reality, Steve Rogers was an extraordinary man with which she had too little time with. He was a blip in her lifetime, albeit a memorable one.

In Steve’s reality, Peggy was the love of his life. But it would be unfair for him to compete with Peggy’s husband when he wielded time-travelling substances, and he did not. It would be selfish of him to go back and get what he wants at the expense of Peggy’s reality.

In Steve’s reality, he could not guarantee Peggy a peaceful death and a long life.

 

It wasn’t fair to steal Peggy’s destiny just because Steve didn’t like his own.

 

Steve opens the door, and the rain had cleared. The sun is shining, and life is starting over again. He takes Peggy Carter’s hand in his own and kisses it sincerely. “Thank you for everything, Agent Carter.”

Peggy looks back at Steve. “You don’t have to go, Steve.” She whispers back.

Steve shakes his head. “It isn’t fair for me to come back. To make him compete with me.” He says jokingly with an eye roll, but Steve also says it so sadly because it truly is what would have happened.

Peggy nods in understanding. “I’ll see you again, okay?”

 

Steve smiles and makes Peggy an empty promise, both of them knowing this is the last time they will ever meet. 

“I hope you get everything you deserve, Peggy.” He says with a knowing smile. Steve doesn’t need to hope, he has destiny on his side. Steve knows what he’s doing, and he knows that once he leaves he can never come back. His one shot to make things right with Peggy一and once he walks out that door his future with Peggy would be nonexistent.

The door closes一as does the opportunity, the  _ destiny _ that comes alongside it一and Steve expects to feel emptiness and longing, but instead finds peace.

 

He lands back in 2023, sitting on a bench because he can’t bear to see the snakelike eyes of his two best friends glaring back at him, demanding answers.

Sam Wilson took a seat beside him, and Steve knew that this is where he belonged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the wonderful support on the last chapter <3 please kudos and comment if you want!! :)  
> twitter:@3000bucky


	3. life is starting over

Bucky weighed his options tenderly as Steve’s voice resonated in his mind.

_ “Where to, then?” _

_ Steve grinned back at his friend. “Anywhere you want.” _

 

In the early days post-Hydra, Bucky was so badly broken down into a shell of a man he could barely decide for himself whether he wanted to wear a white shirt or a black shirt. Everything had always been decided for him, and he was reduced to the decision making skills of a small child. As time progressed, he slowly started to trust himself with bigger decisions.

Choosing to wear the white shirt. Eating plums instead of peaches. Riding a train to Bucharest instead of hailing a taxi. Choosing to save instead of killing. Choosing life over death.

 

Since his time as a free man, he had been tasked with making bigger and bigger decisions. It made Bucky smile, as it was indicative of his trust for himself as well as other's trust for Bucky to do the right thing.

But here and now, inside a beat up Toyota Corolla that had Captain America’s shield on a keychain dangling from the rear-view mirror, Bucky was tasked with the most difficult decision he had ever made.

 

“Is it too much to ask that we don’t go back to New York City just yet?” Bucky asked softly, as Steve kept his eyes on the road.

They were leaving the rubble of the New Avengers Facility just on the outskirts of New York State, and something about Bucky’s small reluctance to return made Steve smile一because he didn’t want to return just yet either.

 

“Anywhere but there.” Steve said simply, turning the car around and driving south.

 

“I hear Cleveland is nice this time of year.” Bucky said as he chose the first city he could think of, the hollow joke making the two of them smile一because nowhere is nice this time, post Thanos.

“Cleveland it is.”

* * *

 

Bucky didn’t know much about Cleveland, except for the fact that they were located on the banks of lake Erie and won a basketball tournament a few years back. Steve knew a little bit more, but mostly about their work on biotechnology which was influential to a SHIELD mission he ran with Natasha. “We were here briefly on a mission right before SHIELD fell. It was our first assignment together, and the first time I saw Nat fight up close, my breath was taken away.”

Bucky saw how Steve’s eyes lit up when he talked about Natasha in passing briefly, during their flight to Wakanda after the battle with Tony Stark. Looking at Steve now, he had the same light in his eyes that he always did, but the light never matched with his tone. Watching Steve talk about Natasha now looked like a mourning man preaching to the choir, and it made Bucky’s heart clam up.

 

As Steve continued to talk about how Natasha and him helped contribute to retrieving files that Hydra agents were planning to intercept, Bucky raised a hand and effectively cut Steve off.

“Sorry.” Bucky said softly. “I just never got to say my condolences. For Natasha.”

Steve’s voice dies out as his mouth flattens into a line, nodding in understanding. “Its okay.” He said, trying hopelessly to bury the choked up feeling in his lungs. “At least she died for a good cause.”

 

Bucky nodded. “I know how much she meant to you.”

Steve laughed, tears pooling in the craters of his eyes.

 

“You know, Natasha told me that she was your first kiss since 1945.” Bucky said with a smirk, reminded of hushed conversations in the middle of tense situations.

Steve let out another bark of laughter in bitter recollection of the memory. “I guess she was, but it didn’t mean anything.” He said with a shrug.

 

Bucky rolled his eyes, Brooklyn accent seeping in as he began to tease Steve like he did back in the day. “Don’t play dumb with me, Rogers. I know she was special to you.” This was easy for him, friendly banter with the person he had known longer than he had even known himself,

Steve laughed again, but shook his head adamantly. “I’m not playing dumb!” He exclaimed petulantly.

“She kissed me so we could evade Hydra agents, but she was just a friend. The first friend I made since coming out of the ice, and the only family she ever had.” He replied softly.

Bucky scoffed, just to rile Steve up some more. “C’mon. Pretty dame like her, and you never set your sights on her?”

 

Steve chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah. She’s my best friend in the whole world. After you, of course.”

Steve’s remark made something deep in Bucky’s heart twist. “You still think I’m your best friend, even after  _ all that _ ?” Bucky said, not needing to elaborate on the increasingly complicated history between them.

“Especially after all that.” Steve affirmed. “You  _ saved  _ me, Buck. You dragged me from the water and saved me like you always do, even when you didn’t know who I was.”

 

Bucky smiled, but any witty quip he had prepared dies on his lips in the stillness of the moment. “I’ll always save you.” He whispers earnestly, the sounds of the car driving across the freeway filling the empty air.

“I know you will, Buck.” Steve says, smile blooming on all features of his face. “Captain America saves the people, but the Winter Soldier saves Captain America. It’s a fact of life, like how the sky is blue or the grass is green.”

 

Bucky flinches at his old moniker, the words  _ Winter Soldier  _ bearing a heavy weight on him. He braces for the familiar dread at his old life, but it never arrives. When Steve calls him the Winter Soldier, he doesn’t say it like everyone else does.

When the public, the press, Hydra, and SHIELD, said the name  _ Winter Soldier _ , they said it with hatred and ice. They spat the word out like a nasty curse they could never shake. Steve calls Bucky the Winter Soldier, but he says it with warmth. He says the words with respect that Bucky doesn’t think he had earned. He calls Bucky the Winter Soldier with the same reverence and admiration as he says the words  _ Black Widow  _ or  _ Iron Man. _

Steve calls Bucky the Winter Soldier as if he were a superhero and not the supervillain he had always been. He calls Bucky the Winter Soldier with the warmth of hot Brooklyn summers, and the newness of an unexpectedly early spring. It makes Bucky feel warm and confused inside.

 


	4. lend me your brain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk why i chose cleveland i've never even been to the city lol
> 
> also if u haven't figured it out this story is going to be DISGUSTINGLY cheesy. i'm talking heart warming lines every chapter, cute observations, the whole shebang
> 
> if u don't like fluffy stuff blame marvel for ripping my heart out

Eleven hours of moments intertwined with silence and philosophical conversation later, Steve and Bucky pulled up to the Cleveland Botanical Garden, the first place they saw when pulling into the heart of the city. It was a place picked at random in the spur of the moment. Steve liked making decisions on the fly, and not intricate battle planned decided upon down to the very last second. It gave him a freedom he never knew he needed.

 

Steve liked the stillness of gardens and plantlife. He had been born and raised in a metropolitan more concrete than green, and it was always a refreshing change of pace when he was surrounded by fresh air and greenery. The quiet of the air would make the hairs on his forearms and at the nape of his neck prickle一and perhaps it would be that way forever一but in this moment he relished in the silence.

This silence didn’t mean the intake of breath right before battle, or a quivering lip on a high stakes reconnaissance mission. This silence meant peace. It meant the forgiving daylight and the interstellar afterthought.

 

He looked to his side, and Bucky had his back turned to Steve as he admired a black and orange butterfly from afar with a soft smile painting his lips. More often than not, Bucky had taken to tying his hair in a low bun. After rousing from his nap in the car he never bothered to retie his hair, and soft wisps of hair continually fell in his face. In the softness of the light and the hair falling in his face, Bucky looked young again.

If Steve tilted his head and squinted in one eye, he could be the same Bucky that rescued him in a Brooklyn alleyway. He could be the Bucky that sang in the shower and always had extra pennies in his pocket. But as his surroundings resurfaced with sharp clarity, Steve came back to the awareness that Bucky was a man that could tell you thirty six ways he would kill you. Steve was a man who could travel back in time and take out armies of men if he just put his mind to it. 

They were not those same kids seventy years ago, but maybe they could be more than that. They had a chance to be better. A chance to remake the world.

 

Steve smiled at the scene, as Bucky stretched out his metal arm and the butterfly landed on his ring finger. He turned to face Bucky and pulled out his smartphone from his pocket, taking an unexpectedly candid shot of Bucky smiling down at the butterfly.

 

As the sound of the camera shutter clicked, Bucky looked up at Steve. The butterfly flew away, fluttering in the wind. Bucky raised an eyebrow at Steve who had the phone resting idly in his hand.

“Took a photo?” 

Steve shrugged. “Remember when my ‘ma said a butterfly landing on you meant good luck?”

Bucky stayed quiet for a while, as Steve imagined a smaller Bucky wandering around in his brain searching for the memory he had lost. After a moment, a smile bloomed on his face. “And my ‘ma said black butterflies say an end to bad events.” He said softly, as if he was untrusting of his own mind.

 

Steve wondered what that was like, to be unable to trust your own memory. To have a door shut on your past at both ends, with no true way of simply  _ knowing _ . They walked on further, quietly observing the peaceful landscape. It was the early afternoon on a workday, and there was hardly a soul in sight. Steve could pretend they were the last two people on Earth一and would that be such a bad thing?

 

Finally, the question that Steve lost sleep over had filled his mind. Steve could never build a mind reading machine, but he bet Tony Stark could do it.

If Tony were here, he’d ask to crack open Bucky’s brain like he had sometimes desperately craved, and read the thoughts that plagued his friend’s mind. It was a horrendously morbid mental image, but the least he supposed he could do was  _ ask _ .

 

“Buck,” Steve began, hailing his friend who was a few steps ahead of him. “Why  _ did  _ you save me on the helicarrier?”

The question makes Bucky stop short. 

 

He flashes Steve a strange look for a moment, before returning to the same resigned look he donned when thinking back to what his mother said about butterflies. Bucky stays silent for so long that Steve begins to wonder whether he’ll even answer the question.

Just as Steve is about to open his mouth and brush off the question, changing the topic to what his favourite 21st century slang word is or something mundane—Bucky begins to speak. 

 

“I didn’t know who you were.” Bucky said curtly. “I didn’t even know who I was.”

Another long silence hangs between them as Steve bites his lip in impatiently.

“I had figured out who you were by the time I finished going to the Smithsonian, but even when I saw my panel in the exhibition I couldn’t really believe that was who I was.” Bucky continued, voice close to giving out.

 

“So why did you do it?” Steve whispers, because it’s the question that has haunted him since the day it happened.

“The only memory I had was that I knew a boy. He was kind and brave… I think. He had a voice that sounded like he was always smiling. He sounded… like you.” Bucky finished, choosing his words carefully. “I think he  _ was  _ you.”

Steve could barely meet Bucky’s eyes. “So you’re saying, you saved me… because I was all you knew?”

Bucky laughed, lightening the mood once more. “When you put it that way, it sounds really deep and intense, but yeah I guess that’s why I did it. Because my memories feel like drowning, but your voice sounds like floating.” 

 

Steve gulped, hoping the afternoon heat could excuse the redness blooming all over his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once upon a time i read a fanfic where all bucky knew was steve and i took that idea and ran with it
> 
> pls kudos/comment if u enjoyed !!! thank uuu <3


	5. in a room full of art i'd still stare at you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm installing sims 4 so if i don't update in a couple days thats why

It’s late afternoon by the time they exit the botanical garden, and Bucky could see the yearning in Steve’s eyes as he looked at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Bucky quirked an eyebrow up. “Do you want to go in?”

Steve smiled, and it slowly broke out into a well mannered laugh. “Any museum without the words  _ Captain America Exhibit  _ plastered to the front is a museum worth entering.”

 

Fourteen minutes and many paintings later, the duo found themselves ensconced in a plethora of murals, frescoes, sculptures, and other masterpieces. Whilst all of them were outright beautiful in their own respects, the painting that drew the most attention and admiration was by far the painting of Cupid and Psyche by Jacques Louis-David. 

It wasn’t the largest nor the brightest painting, but any viewer could tell that it was designed with a carefree elegance and a watchful eye.

 

Bucky was sitting on the many viewing chairs strewn around the gallery, but Steve was standing up close to take in every ounce of detailing in the piece. Eventually Bucky walked up to Steve, who was deep in concentration.

It was a look that Bucky rarely saw, one that only revealed itself during army strategy sessions or medical missions. Steve’s face contorted in a look of both admiration and knit muted passion. It was the look of love, of pure dedication to an art craft or saving people—the look of a saviour.

 

“Interesting piece?” Bucky asked. He never did have an eye for the arts, nor did he have an appreciation for it. Steve had both.

“Decidedly erotic. Have you heard the tale of Cupid and Psyche?” Steve asked.

Bucky shook his head.

 

“Psyche was a beautiful person, and Cupid was sent to punish her. Instead, Cupid fell in love with Psyche, and Psyche with Cupid. Eventually Psyche betrays Cupid’s trust, but despite her mistake her love was so strong that she’d do everything. She was willing to sacrifice everything to gain something better.” Steve told Bucky. 

”I’d love to talk to the artist and ask what drew the inspiration.” Steve mumbled, more to himself than Bucky.

 

“Why don’t you? You can go back in time to do it, can’t you?” Bucky let out a bark of laughter, his cutting remark icier than either of them expected.

Steve takes a step back and tears his gaze away from the painting, shooting an indescribable look of muted indignation. “I had to go back to return the stones.” He explains slowly, and it infuriates Bucky. He didn’t particularly like being talked down on as if he was a child, especially so post-Winter Soldier brainwashing.

 

Bucky stayed silent, lips drawn into a tight frown. “You were planning to stay.” He said pointedly.

Steve finally tore his gaze away from Bucky and faced the painting once more. “But I came back.” 

“That’s not the point. You were planning to stay. Planning to stay in the forties, while another version of me was getting my brains blown out of me and an arm hacked off in a German cave somewhere.” Bucky reiterated insistently.

 

Steve looked down at his feet. “What do you want me to say, Buck? That I’ll never deserve Peggy? That I came back because I could never live with myself, knowing I’d have a life in our time when you would never have that?  That I’ll never have half as much worth and beauty in me as she does in her pinky finger?” He exclaimed, seething silently.

“Anything but that.” Bucky said, taking a step forward and joining him at the forefront of the painting.

 

They stay quiet for a while. Steve, drinking in the colour and fluidity of the painting. Bucky, staring at the way Steve’s eyes swirl like the ocean itself.

Many moments later, Bucky smiles. “You save humanity, go to hell and back, and save your best friend from brainwashing—and you still think you’re not worth it.” He exclaims with a shake of his head.

 

“Would you blame me?” Steve says morosely, turning to stare Bucky in the eyes. Gone was the abrupt incandescence, replaced with a resigned calmness in Steve’s eyes.

 

“Not at all.” Bucky said, smiling as Steve received an answer he wasn’t anticipating. “Though you saved millions, how many more were killed? How many were exposed to dangerous circumstances simply because they lived in New York? How many died, just so you could live?”

Steve opened his mouth in surprised, brain scrambling for a response. “Buck, I—“

“Let me finish.” Bucky said, cutting Steve short. "The universe spared you, but Natasha and Tony weren’t as lucky. Just because their lives were short lived doesn’t mean you can’t learn anything from them. Natasha was orphaned and trained as a KGB assassin, but she found a family in the Avengers. She was the godmother of Clint’s family. She was happy, and she died doing what she loved.”

Steve’s look of surprise and blatant shock eased up at the mention of Natasha. Bucky took Steve’s silence as invitation to continue. “Tony lived most of his life as an arrogant playboy billionaire. He was captured by terrorists in Afghanistan, but continued his lifestyle to a certain extent. It was only when he met the right person—the love of his life—when he decided to settle down and start a family.”

 

Steve continued staring at Bucky. Bucky smirked. “Don’t look so surprised. I’ve read their Wikipedia articles. And Natasha’s KGB file. You know, during the Hydra thing. Interesting stuff.”

Steve rolled his eyes, grinning at the antics of his friend. “What I’m trying to say is this.” Bucky continued. “You decided to come back. You said so yourself. Tony told you to get a life, and you came back.” Came back to me, Bucky wants to say—the unfinished words hanging between them. “You’ll always be the man out of time, we both will be. Maybe you’re not worthy, but you’re at least worthy of a second chance. Don’t waste it.”

 

Steve blinked slowly, trying to find his words. “You deserve a second chance too, Buck.”

Bucky scoffed. “Not everyone deserves a second chance, and definitely not me. But even if I don’t deserve it… I’m taking every chance I get.”

 

“Do I have a place in your second chance?” Steve asked quietly. 

“Only if I have one in yours.”

 

He does.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cupid and psyche by jacques louis-david


	6. give the heart a holiday

Between Bucky and Steve—the two of them were loaded. Aside from the government backpay, giant trusts in their name, and civilian charity donations, Steve had an obscene sum of money Tony Stark left behind made out to one Steven Grant Rogers. They could’ve stayed penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton, or bought a private house in the Hamptons, if only they were in New York. Unfortunately, they had the misfortune of being in Cleveland at three in the morning. The only places that would take them were run down motels on the other side of the train tracks, and luckily neither of them minded. After being in the military, prisoners of war, and having the daylights beat out of them, any bed is a blessing.

 

The problem arose when none of the motels in the vicinity had a two bedroom, and they were still the same parsimonious boys from Brooklyn who had to pinch every penny they found on the curb—unwilling to relent and pay for two rooms, even if the two of them could buy the motel if they wanted. Steve initially suggested they should just pay for the two rooms, but Bucky glared at him.

 

“We shared a bed for five Brooklyn summers. One night won’t kill you.” Bucky said, not even sparing a glance at Steve.

Steve narrowed his eyebrows. “You… remember that?” He asked tenderly.

 

Bucky rolled his eyes with a smirk, and for a moment he was the same Bucky from 1920.  

He shoved the key into Steve’s palm. “I also remember you kick in your sleep.”

  
  


Steve remembers a double bed to be larger. The two conclusions he can draw are either that double beds have resized since 1920, or the two of them had grown exponentially.

He suspects the latter, but it is highly probable that the bed had shrunk too. 

 

The motel is subpar, but still marginally according to standard. It has a bed, complete washroom, and a TV right in front of the bed. It has a cloying smell of something in the middle of Lysol and bleach, decaying walls fraught with acid stains, and yet it’s a better stay than the bolthole that Steve found Bucky staying at in Bucharest.

Steve never wants to remember Bucharest, or the way it made his skin crawl. With every passing second Steve stood in that decrepit apartment, he felt more and more responsible for Bucky’s state. He might feel guilty for not saving Bucky earlier for the rest of his life.

The apartment in Bucharest visits Steve in his dreams from time to time, and it always ends with Bucky leaving. It ends with Bucky walking out of the apartment, but it leaves him feeling like Bucky is leaving his life.

 

Steve walks out of the shower some time later, smelling of soap and decay. The first thing he sees is Bucky sitting in the middle of the bed, writing furiously into a leather bound notebook.

 

“Whatcha writing?” Steve asked.

 

Bucky was unable to conceal the smile forming at the corners of his lips. “I remembered something.”  _ Bucky smiles when he remembers something _ , a fact that Steve stockpiles for later, taking a seat beside his friend.

The familiar hasty writing Steve scanned over made Steve smile. It was reminiscent of all nighters spent on homework and of juvenile love letters. However, when he began to take in the words that Bucky had written down, it made Steve’s heart sink.

 

_ Agent Margaret Carter was the only woman I ever saw beat a man in an arm wrestling competition. I tried to hate her. (Don’t know why.) I tried to hate her. (Don’t know why.) Really tried to hate her. (Don’t know why.) She was pretty. Her lips were red. She always had curls. Looked at Steve as if she found the piece to the missing puzzle. Never talked to me, never even acknowledged my existence. Talked to all the other men. Never me. Tried to hate her, but I don’t know why. _

 

“Why… did you remember this?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky shrugs. “I think it’s because you’ve talked the most about Peggy out of anyone, ever.”

 

Steve nods, and they stay silent for some time more. Something about seeing Peggy’s name in Bucky’s handwriting makes something catch in Steve's heart. “Did you? Hate Peggy, I mean.”

Bucky shakes his head slowly, trying to remember. “I tried to, but I didn’t. I don’t even know why I tried to hate her in the first place.”

Steve drops the subject, because he might cry or scream at Bucky’s recollected memory.

  
  


Steve comes to the realisation that talking about the difficult moments helped Bucky remember. It also helped Bucky learn things he never even knew in the first place. They spend the night like that, side by side but barely touching. Steve does most of the talking and makes sure to overshare, because Bucky always has follow up questions he doesn’t have the heart to ask.

 

“Did I ever... have a dame back home?” Bucky asks after many moments and many anecdotes. It’s so late the sun is practically coming up, but he’d rather stay up talking because the dreams are just as bad.

Steve doesn’t miss a beat when answering the question. “I’m pretty sure you had three dames. At the same time.” He joked with a scoff. “You went dancing with a dame every night, while I was the one that cooked and cleaned because I had nothing better to do.”

Bucky frowned. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”

Steve laughed in good nature. “It was your whole personality! Take a dame dancing, and score a kiss by the end of the night. You’d come home when I was just waking up, but you always made sure to come home.” Steve said, in fond recollection of the memory.

 

“Were you like that, with Peggy? Did you take her dancing?” Bucky asked quietly, still not entirely believing that he was the type to go dancing, furthermore to take a dame dancing.

Bucky could feel the energy leave Steve’s body at his question.

“I owed her a dance for the longest time. Almost a century.” Steve said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “But I took her dancing. And now I don’t owe anyone anything.”

 

Bucky's almost asleep when Steve's words wash over him.

 

"Except for you. I'll always owe you, Buck."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! please kudos&comment if you enjoyed<3  
> twitter: 3000bucky


	7. toy soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what do we want? another car conversation!  
> when do we want it? now!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its been a hot minute since i posted lol blame the sims

Chicago was a measly five hours away from Cleveland, and it was really the only place Steve or Bucky could agree on going to next. When Bucky had suggested Indianapolis, Steve reminded Bucky that he had some rather unpleasant memories in Indianapolis from when Captain America was merely the army’s poster boy. When Steve suggested Washington D.C, Bucky frowned, hesitant to go anywhere near a nation’s capital full of people who still very much considered him a terrorist.

So, Chicago it was. A nice, neutral, place.

 

Bucky went to Chicago once, a memory told to him by everything except his brain. Him and his family once went for spring break. He can’t remember anything about the city itself, but he knew that there was a piece of him he would never remember.

In times like this, quiet introspective evenings on endless freeways, Bucky missed his memories the most. 

He had his chin resting on his palm looking out the passenger window, and he must’ve looked morose, or else Steve would have never asked.

 

“What’cha thinking of, Buck?” Steve asked.

Bucky smiled. It was Steve’s favourite question, and he asked it many times in a day. There were times when Bucky wanted to scowl and beg Steve to ask another question一any question一but then he remembers Hydra facilities and electrocution.

 

The Hydra operatives would read out a case file and tell him to murder men in cold blood, but they would never ask what he  _ thought _ . They never looked Bucky in the eye and asked him, “What do you think of the mission,  _ зимний солдат _ ?” 

In the beginning, when the first generation of his caretakers were still alive, they treated Bucky with some semblance of humanity. They would ask him, “Are you hungry,  _ зимний солдат?”  _ or, “Do you remember who you were,  _ зимний солдат?”   _ Looking back at these memories, Bucky suspected they asked these questions not out of common courtesy nor for Bucky’s wellbeing, but because they felt guilty.

Because they were the ones that stole Bucky’s humanity, and they remember him as a person with feelings. With a heart.

But bye the time nature had run its course and a new crop of scientists were handed the responsibility of Bucky’s survival, they had treated him more like a toy or an object than a human. They didn’t know Bucky, only the Winter Soldier. And the Winter Soldier wasn’t a human, he was a  _ thing _ .

Suddenly, “Are you hungry,  _ зимний солдат?”  _ turned into “Mission report,  _ зимний солдат.”  _ Questions became commands, and nobody had ever asked him what he thought, not once in his lonely existence.

 

So now, when Steve asks Bucky what he’s thinking about, Bucky always answers. Even when his answers are less than pleasant, or when he’d rather keep the thoughts to himself. His thoughts always seemed lighter when shared with someone else.

“Did you hear me, Buck?” Steve asked, jolting Bucky out of his head.

 

Bucky nodded slowly, looking at the blur of freeway lights. “I went to Chicago. Spring break.”

Steve smiled at Bucky with a hesitant smile. “We were eight. I didn’t want you to go because it meant i’d be stuck at home the whole time.”

Bucky narrowed his eyebrows. “You didn’t have anyone else to play with?”

Steve shook his head. “You were my only friend.”

Bucky nodded his head, looking back out at the night sky. “I don’t remember that. Leaving you.” He replies, and it makes his heart hammer in his chest.

 

He doesn’t remember much. The colour of his shirt on the day he left Steve. The length of his mother’s skirt. The blue of Steve’s eyes. The smell of baking bread in the oven. He can’t remember where the fact ends and the fiction begins. “I don’t remember much.” Bucky adds, quieter.

“I cried. I think.” Steve said with an embarrassed smile. “My mom got mad at me once you left. Because  _ boys ain’t supposed to cry _ .” He said, mimicking his mother’s voice.

 

Bucky thinks back to when his memory was wiped, the white hot electricity pulsing in his veins. Every single time they wiped him, he cried. Not because of the pain, but because he would forget the pain. “No, they’re not supposed to cry.”

* * *

 

“You held the hammer, right?” Bucky asked, many hours later into the drive. His voice is so uncertain that Steve has to strain to hear it.

“Thor’s hammer?” Steve asks, even though it was probably his hammer, now.

“Is that the lightning one?” Bucky asks. 

Steve nods. “Yeah.” He smiles timidly. “It is.”

“Did it… hurt?” Bucky asks wearily. 

Steve has to think about that question for longer than he should. “If it did, I don’t remember. My whole body hurt after the battle, but my arm did feel…”

“Scorched?” Bucky offered.

Steve nodded. “Yeah. My arms felt scorched.”

 

Bucky thought back to the end of the battle, and it happened in a blur. Almost everyone at the front lines needed immediate medical attention. He himself needed mended bones. He remembers overhearing that Steve was in the burn unit, but the memory is as far away as his childhood ones.

 

“That’s how my memories feel. The ones I can’t remember.” Bucky says slowly. “They used electricity on me. To… scorch the memories out of me.”

Steve stays quiet.

“It’s like someone lit my house on fire and I’m still choking on the smoke.”

“Buck, I…” Steve trailed off, unable to think of anything to say.

Bucky shook his head, plastering on a smile. “I’m here now. That’s what matters.” He said with a careful nod.

 

“Can you tell me about the time you kicked your own ass instead?” Bucky asked with a playful grin.

Steve chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Oh my God, you’ll never believe what I had to say in order for myself to back down…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> of course, i'm referring to when steve told 2012!steve, "bucky is alive" and not the peggy locket lol
> 
> зимний солдат = winter soldier


	8. 120 seconds (give or take)

Steve Rogers is halfway through the daily newspaper when he realises a gun is pointed at his head.

Steve rolls his eyes, not looking away from the paper. He can feel the muzzle at the back of his head when he moves slightly back, and it feels like a small handgun. The type you could get at Walgreens.

 

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that the Waldorf Astoria allows firearms in the hotel.” Steve says coolly, biding his time. He knew that Bucky stepped out for a cigarette three minutes ago, and he would be back in the lobby in two. He just had to find a way to keep the gunman’s attention for two more minutes without causing a scene.

Steve sighed. “So, what do you want? Money? Pym particles? A shout out on Twitter?”

 

The gunman pushed the muzzle harshly up against the back of Steve’s head. “Revenge.” He growled out.

Steve chuckled as he rolled his eyes, making a show of checking his watch.  _ A minute and thirty seconds, give or take.  _ “Well. There’s a lot of that going around right now. Go on.”

 

The gunman’s grip on the gun loosened, and the persistent pressure of the muzzle at the back of Steve’s head felt lighter. “Every bad guy has a monologue, right? A dark backstory? Go on, tell me yours.”

“I’m not the bad guy.  _ You are _ .” The gunman replied.

“You know, I’m surprised nobody has seen you pointing a gun at me…” Steve trailed off, not really listening to what the gunman had to say. 

“People don’t want to intervene with what they don’t want to see.”

“Fair enough.” Steve conceded, checking his watch.  _ Thirty seconds now. Any moment, Buck. _

 

The gunman growled deeply again, almost as if he was remembering the reason he was here. He rammed the muzzle into the back of Steve’s head once more. “My wife was in the military. Coast guard. They called everyone into the battle. Marines, navy, air force, you name it.”

Steve stayed silent as he heard the door  _ whoosh  _ open behind him, footsteps so quiet only he could make them out. “We had our son right after the decimation. Her teammates say she died from the air strike. The one your little  _ Scarlet Witch _ caused. Barely any time for last words. She died with her eyes open. You brought everyone from five years ago back, at the cost of everyone from today. How  _ do _ you sleep at night,  _ Captain _ ?”

 

“Morgan Stark was born just after the decimation. Her father died because he knew if he lived, everyone else would die. She will grow up with just one parent, as will your kid.” 

Steve turned around abruptly, staring into the gunman’s eyes. Just out of the corner of his eye, he can see Bucky standing off to the side. “I  _ sleep  _ at night seeing the people I  _ saved _ in my dreams, not the ones that I killed.” 

 

He gives Bucky a shake of his head so small it’s almost imperceptible, but Bucky sees it. And so, mayhem ensues.

 

Bucky sprints forward, knocking the gunman off balance. His metal arm whips through the air, striking for an uppercut. He misses, but there’s still enough time for the two of them to gather momentum. 

Steve springs up and punches the gunman twice as hard as he expected. The gunman hits Steve’s head with the barrel of the gun so hard he can taste blood. get up. The gunman grabs at Steve’s throat, fingers digging into his windpipes. The lack of oxygen immediately hits Steve as pain ebbs and flows throughout his body. Steve locks eyes with the gunman, slamming his chin down on the gunman’s two hands. Steve then grabs both of the gunman’s wrists with his own two hands. He pulls the gunman towards him, bending him down and kicking him with his knee to the chest. The gunman reels back, releasing his grip.   
  


The gunman is knocked back, but he begins to take off running. Steve watches the gunman’s legs pump, as he stands back to let Bucky chase after the guy. Bucky was always the one that won when they raced, after all. 

Bucky takes out a small dagger, throwing and catching it in a well timed motion. Steve recognizes this moveーthe same one that he used when they first fought against each other. The gunman’s leg crumples, as his body rolls to the ground. Bucky pins the gunman down with a dagger to his neck, his free hand slamming into the gunman’s forehead.

 

It’s less than a minute later when the security starts rushing to the scene of the crime, and Bucky shoves the gunman to his feet and gives him to the authorities. Bucky walks over to Steve, who was waiting by the exit the whole time.

  
  


“Where’s your shield?” Bucky asked, looking at the purpling bruises on Steve’s throat.

Steve furrows his eyebrow. “In the hotel room.”

“Why didn’t you bring it?” Bucky asked simply.

“Why would I bring my fucking shield to dinner?” Steve replied.

Bucky shrugged. “I guess you’re right,” he conceded.

“The question is, why do you have a knife on you?” Steve asked.

Bucky shot Steve a quizzical look. “I always have a knife on me.”

 

They held each other’s gaze for a long period of time. Bucky, confused and Steve, mildly frightened.

 

“So, I was thinking Dim Sum?” Bucky said after a while, as the two of them walked to the exit.

Steve quirked a smile at Bucky. “You know, Doctor Strange can predict the fortune cookies.”

Bucky laughed. “No he can’t.”

“No, he can’t.” Steve replied, laughing back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did definitely make this chapter a little satirical with the whole "bad guy monologue", "nobody ever seeing anything", and "the good guys walking away scot-free" cliches we see in marvel movies (cough avengers getting shawarma after tony was literally GOING TO GO THROUGH A HOLE IN SPACE)
> 
> anw i hope u enjoyed my lil doctor strange/sherlock reference i do so love that detective show lol


	9. ode to the war years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bucky doesn't deal with traumatic situations very well.

Bucky has half a glass of green tea, three dumplings, and a bowl of noodles in his stomach when he  _ slows down _ . It’s something he never does, something he never had the luxury of doing.

But here they were. At a restaurant, eating cheap Dim Sum. Alive. Together. Young. Against all odds.

 

Steve is rambling on about nothing in particular, it’s Bucky’s favourite Steve. A Steve so rambunctious and happy, he barely knows what to do with himself. He’s talking alternately about one day overthrowing the current American government’s xenophobic leader, and which type of cheese is best on whole wheat bread.

It makes Bucky smile, a whole and full smile that doesn’t leave him for many moments.

 

He was by no means a good guy. He wasn’t a superhero. If he was a superhero, he would be such an  _ unlikable  _ superhero. No sane person would look up to him as a hero. And in the end, there was always the subtle  _ knowing  _ that superheroes had everything they could ever want. They defied the impossible, and always got what they deserved. (Except in the case of Tony Stark, because even death himself didn’t deserve that man.)

For that reason, he wasn’t a good guy. He was a bad guy. A really, really, lucky one. One who had been young his whole life and still didn’t quite know how to deal with youth.

Steve was a good guy, through and through. Someone so good didn’t deserve to be friends with someone so selfish, but life finds a way in the strangest of circumstances. 

 

Was it only two hours ago when Steve had a gun pointed to his head? The thought gives Bucky pause. 

 

“And that’s why a wall is never the answーBucky, what’s wrong?” Steve said, as he watched the smiling face of Bucky fall.

Bucky’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “You could have died.” He said simply. They hadn’t discussed the ordeal, bantering and joking all the way to the doorstep of the diner.

Steve looked around the diner and shrugged. “Yeah, but I didn’t. And I’m here now.” He said with a complacent smile.

“You had no weapons on you, and the guy had a gun to your head. How would you have survived  _ that _ ?” Bucky asked. He wasn’t angry or worried, and it was the bone-chilling empty tone his former life favoured that shone through instead.

 

Steve shrugged again and shot Bucky a toothy smile. “Go to Stephen Strange? You know, he’s a neurosurgeon and I bet thatー” 

Bucky held a hand up, effectively silencing Steve. “I’ve had enough of your bullshit for a lifetime. How were you planning on surviving that?”   

Steve gave Bucky a confused look. “I fought against Thanos, Buck. I was sure that a guy with a handgun was no harm.”

“You fought against him with weapons and backup. You don’t bring words to a firefight, you know that. You had no weapons, and no backup.”

 

“I had you.” Steve said simply. Earnestly.

Bucky looks at Steve, swallows hard, and blinks. “I was smoking.”

Their tea had now gone cold, and Steve looks down at the laminate table. “I knew you’d come back in and see me being held at gunpoint. I was just stalling for time.”

 

“How did you know I had a weapon on me?” 

“You always have a weapon.” Steve replied. 

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “No, I remember you asking why I had a knife on me.”

“You always have your arm on you, don’t you?” Steve said simply.

Bucky frowned. “I hate it when people say my arm is a weapon.” He said, looking down at the table and absentmindedly stirring his bowl of noodles.

“It is, though.” Steve offered.

 

Most of their conversations were like this. Short and curt, arguments going absolutely nowhere. Progress and turning the other cheek never an option with the two of them. It was how they were, and it was how they would forever be.

Bucky shakes his head and they divert to another subject. Throughout the rest of the dinner, they talk about absolutely nothing and quite literally everything, but it doesn’t dissuade the sinking feeling in Bucky’s chest.

Steve could have died.

* * *

 

Bucky gets like this, sometimes. He knows when it happens, but it’s out of his control.

The Wakandans did their best to get rid of most of the post traumatic stress he had induced, but it appeared not all self destructive tendencies were lost.

Sometimesーespecially with SteveーBucky just  _ freezes  _ up. 

 

Steve is stepping out of the washroom, hair damp and water droplets flicking Bucky’s face, and Steve jokes about how the water pressure at the Waldorf Astoria beats the one at the motel any day of the week.

Bucky hears him, he swears that he does. He wants to reach out and reply to Steve, but sometimes he freezes up. It’s like his body is caught between two lives, and he doesn’t know which way to be strung along.

 

Steve calls Bucky’s name again, but he doesn’t reply. He’s too busy replaying the events over again in his mind. A gun held to Steve’s head, the gunman kicking the shit out of his friend not moments later. Steve, staring death in the eye and not quite knowing it.

Steve dying, and Bucky being the only one that can save him. Steve on the brink of death, and relying on a mentally unstable ex Soviet Spy. A weapon in human form, and the only defense that Steve had. 

A thousand scenarios run though Bucky’s head, and it makes his heart ache. Steve didn’t deserve this, not quite. He didn’t deserve Steve. He didn’t deserve for Steve to come back, to take him across the country while the rest of the world remakes itself.

 

He can't move. He doesn't deserve to.


	10. verbose antitoxin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm quite pleased with this chapter if i do say so myself

Steve can’t quite get through to Bucky, and he’s running himself into the ground thinking of what to do.

He was calling for Bucky’s attention for about half an hour now, but Bucky continued staring into the bedding as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

 

He hated picking up his phone, especially after the war had ended. There were always too many reporters asking for an exclusive and brands wanting a sponsorship. Steve exhaled.

It would be 7:30 in the morning all the way on the opposite side of the world in Wakanda. Shuri should be waking up by now.

* * *

 

“Why have you woken me up so early, Captain?” Shuri asked from the other end of Steve’s phone.

“Bucky isn’t speaking.” Steve blurts out as he chews on his lip nervously.

“Well. When couples get into arguments there’s always therapy. I don’t understand why you’re asking me about this when I haven’t even dated anyonー” Shuri began.

 

“Not  _ speaking to me _ . Bucky isn’t speaking. At all.” Steve said, trying to swallow up the heat rising up in his body.

 

Shuri stays quiet on the line for moments more after hearing this. “Is he moving?”

“No.”

“Sleeping?”

“No.”

“Stilted breathing?”

“No.”

“Standing?”

“No.”

“Shaking?”

“No.”

“Sweating?”

“No.”   
“Shivering?”

“Noーare you out of verbs that start with S yet?” Steve said testily. He knew he was treading over unstable waters by being curt with a member of the Crown of Wakanda, especially after the whole Civil War ordeal hadn’t cooled down entirelyーbut Steve was growing desperate.

 

“Yes. I’m done. Bucky’s just having delayed reactions to trauma. Maybe he’s starting to remember more incidents in his life. Maybe even what he did as the Winter Soldier. He should be fine in a few hours. Just make sure that there’s no threats in the environment and that he’ll be safe when coming out of the haze.” Shuri said brightly.

 

Steve stayed silent wondering if that was all, when finally he ceded. “Alright. Thanks, Shuri.”

“No problem, Captain.” Shuri said as Steve disconnected the call.

 

Steve was always a man of action. If he was faced with a problem, he faced it headon. There was never a problem that could be solved by  _ waiting for it to go away _ , but if that was what Shuri supposed they should do, he decided to follow it.

 

It was 11:30 at night, and Steve turned off most of the lights except for the reading lamps on each of their end tables. Bucky didn’t move at all whilst Steve did this, nor did he move when Steve made the room comfortably warmer, or when he brewed two hot cups of steaming chamomile tea.

Steve settled into bed an hour later, and Bucky had still zoned out from the world. He had expected thisーthe tough days. Not every day would be light and easy banter. There would be days when the weight of the world caught up to either one of them, and it was just pure luck that Bucky was first.

They both knew that skeletons in the closet were no good. Bottling things up for later was a futile attempt, and yet they still did it. There would be days like this, and weathering it out would just have to become a part of the process.

 

With the room warm and cups of steaming tea at both of the boys’ bedside, Steve was at a loss of what to do next. It might be absurd, but it would be a way to pass the time.

Steve gets off from his bed and sits cross legged at the foot of Bucky’s bed. They’re so close to each other that Steve could reach out in front of Bucky and shake him back to life, but he knows better than for that to work.

 

Steve’s voice is hoarse once he finds it. “I don’t know if you can hear me, or even if you  _ want  _ to hear me, but Shuri said that talking to you might be a good way to get you to come back.”  Steve bit down on his lip. He didn’t want Bucky to think he was talking to him just because Shuri told him to. “And, I really hope you’re okay.”

 

Looking back at Bucky’s lifeless eyes, Steve frowns as he sees no movement from his friend. And so, he presses on. “Everyone deals with trauma in different ways. I led a support group for people who lost loved ones in the snap.” 

Steve wonders what Bucky would respond to that. It was a fact of life that Steve loved Bucky, and Bucky was lost in the snap. But it was never said as plainly as it did just then.

 

“Whenever something bad happens to me, I have to act on it. It’s how I’ve solved most of my problems. It’s why I always flew my fists before running my mouth.” Steve smiles, thinking back to when they were kids.

 

“But if I was in your position… I don’t know what I would do. You’ve lived through so much, and I know that it was like another person was living in your body while you were the Winter Soldier, but it  _ was  _ you, Buck. You were the Winter Soldier, no matter how much you hated it. And if you want to push that past away from you, I completely understand. But… just know that you’ll be by my side no matter what. You’ll always be my friend, no matter what you did back then.”

Steve looks across to Bucky to see if that would awaken anything inside his friend, but Bucky stays catatonic. Steve continues talking for many moments after, usually mindless stuff just to fill the time. But an hour later Steve’s voice is raspy and Bucky is nowhere near responsive just yet. It makes Steve feel desperate, and he’s at a loss of what to do.

 

He resorts to sketching. He had retrieved his sketchbook from the Smithsonian many years ago, when his hunt for Bucky in the 21st century had just began.

 

He looked over at Bucky now, a small broken man. Not the same kid so willing to stand up to bullies for Steve, not the same soldier that would take a bullet for his country.

He crossed enemy lines to get Bucky back. He was hailed as a hero for saving many lives that night in Germany, but Steve didn’t care. He needed Bucky back.

Steve refused to fight his best friend. He dropped his shield, an item that at one point was the only thing from his past life that carried over. Steve broke the law for Bucky. He became an international fugitive overnight because of Bucky. He left Tony  _ fucking  _ Stark to die in Siberia because of Bucky, for Christ’s sake.

 

He looks over to the man on the other bed now, and he can’t fathom how he could have ever dreamt of leaving Bucky for Peggy. For a woman who barely knew him. Peggy didn't know that Steve took sugar in his coffee, or that he always double knots his laces. Peggy doesn't know that Steve always counts to sixty before waking up in the morning, or that he had a penchant for double stuffed Oreos. Bucky knew all of that. Hell, Bucky was the reason for all of that.

 

He hadn’t drawn in his notebook in ages. At first they were tiny scribbles he warmed up with, but by the time it was two o’clock in the morning, he was drawing his truth. His very body and blood.

Steve drew everything. Losing Bucky on the train. Coming out of the ice. His first look at Times Square in the twenty-first century. Visiting the Smithsonian exhibit. Looking over at Bucky’s feature. Seeing the Winter Soldier’s face mask drop. The glint of confusion, a owlish glint of green shining forth as the Winter Soldier says “ _ Who the hell is Bucky?”  _

Fighting in the helicarrier. Waking up on shore, his shield still fresh with Bucky’s fingerprints. Bucky’s apartment in Bucharest. The curve of Bucky’s arm underneath a maroon shirt. Fighting alongside Bucky, not against him. Saving Steve saving Bucky, just as Bucky saves Steve. Passing the shield between each other as Iron Man fights in the middle. Flying to Wakanda. Watching Bucky go under the ice once more. Reuniting in Wakanda. Bucky’s soft voice telling him “ _ He wasn’t bad, for the end of the world.”  _

 

Bucky standing beside him as they face off with Thanos’ men. Bucky whispering Steve’s name as he disappears into dust. Fighting five years later, attending a funeral that same year. Watching his morose face as they both understood what was happening, and the shock that came when he decides to stay, and all the moments in between.

Steve draws Bucky right now, hunched over and cross legged. Every curve of his body, every inch of stubble. He draws the two of them sitting opposite each other on one hotel room double bed. He makes sure to get each strand of hair completely perfect, because life would never quite be like this ever again.

 

Steve almost doesn’t hear Bucky when he starts shuffling around, rumpling the sheets from under him.

Steve looks up from his sketchbook as Bucky looks around the hotel room sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck.

 

“Welcome back.” Steve tells Bucky with an infectious grin.

“Sorry,” Bucky begins with a timid smile. “That happens sometimes.”


	11. i think i saw you in a dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it gets pretty gay from here on out

Bucky doesn’t quite realise he had drifted off to sleep, but he  _ is  _ aware that some time a few hours later he was jolted awake by the sound of screaming.

In an instant, Bucky is up on his feet with a knife in hand. He’s had all the exits mapped out, and if need be can exit the building in twenty six seconds flat. They’re on the thirty seventh floor of the towering sixty level building. There’s a fire escape he can use to drop down onto a lower floor. From there he can scale the building and find a window washing platform if he’s lucky. He’ll be down on the ground in three minutes. 

Bucky’s hands are flying to the gun tucked underneath the mattress. It has six rounds loaded and an extra ten rounds tucked away in his bag somewhere. He stops abruptly, because neither him nor Steve are in danger.

 

It’s quiet for a moment, and then Bucky hears Steve exhale from behind him.

“How many weapons did you bring?”

 

“Bad dream?” Bucky retorts, deflecting Steve’s question expertly.

“Did I wake you?” Steve counters, answering Bucky’s question with another.

Bucky shrugged, giving Steve a lopsided smile. “I wasn’t sleeping much anyways.” A lie.

 

Steve’s mouth flattens into a thin line as he looks at the clock. It’s three thirty in the morning, just an hour and a half since Bucky woke up from his daze. “Try and get some sleep, yeah?” He says with a decisive nod.

Bucky nods back sharply. “You too.”

* * *

 

It’s four in the morning when Bucky is woken up by screaming once more, and in an instant he’s at Steve’s bedside.

It’s a scream of sheer terror, one that chills Bucky to the bone. It’s unlike anything that Bucky had ever heard from his friend.

Bucky tries shaking Steve awake, but it doesn’t work. He hops on to the top of the bed, sitting at the edge and trying in vain to drag Steve out from under his nightmarish haze.

 

“Steve!” Bucky tries again, shaking Steve awake.

Steve comes back to life, blinking sleepily. “Bucky?” He whispers softly. Even under the darkness of the night, Bucky can see trails of tears refracting light from his friend’s face.

Bucky shot Steve a sad smile, as he moved to sit beside his friend. “I’m right here, ‘pal.”

 

Bucky doesn’t know how it happens, but Steve’s head ends up resting on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky tries not to think too much of it. Why should he?

“Bad nightmare?” Bucky tries, after a many moments’ worth of silence.

Steve chuckled. “Awful.”

“Wanna talk about it?” Bucky asks.

 

Steve can’t keep the grin off his face, but it’s restrained. Slightly painful to watch. Bucky gives Steve a once over, and nods decisively. The sun would be up any moment now, and Bucky really wants to get some sleep. It’s been a hell of a day, from an attempted murder to freezing up in the face of trauma.

Of course, not a day goes by where Bucky  _ doesn’t  _ have nightmares, but it wouldn’t be sleep without them.

 

Bucky moves to get up and smiles at Steve. “You’ll be okay, pal?” 

 

Steve tries to smile, with a mouth half open and forming a sentence sloppily, when his face suddenly contorts into something more morose. He grasps at Bucky’s wrist, harder than either boy expects. 

“Can… can you stay?” Steve asks Bucky desperately.

 

Bucky’s either too tired or too shocked to argue, so instead he nods with a small smile and climbs back into bed with Steve wordlessly.

They stay rigid on either side of the bed for eons, and then Bucky lets out a small chuckle. “Different from Brooklyn 1941, huh?” Bucky jokes.

 

Steve laughs. Really laughs. “The worst was when you climbed into our bed after a night of dancin’, smelling like beer and God knows what.”

Bucky smiles and shakes his head, turning on his back to meet Steve eye to eye. “I remember having more space on the bed, though.” He said with a shrug.

Steve smiled. “Blame Erskine’s serum,” he said, licking his lower lip and staring at Bucky. Bucky looked up at the ceiling. “And in fairness, you’ve filled out quite a bit since the forties, too.”

 

Bucky chuckled and looked back at Steve. He prays that the night is so dark that the redness in his face doesn’t show.

He has no reason to act all flustered. Sharing a bed was nothing new for them. Back in Brooklyn they had a crappy one bedroom apartment with an even crappier double bed that they shared between each other. Bucky knew Steve’s breathing patterns more than he knew his own.

 

And yet, sleeping in the same bed together had never been so… intimate.  It never made Bucky’s heart hammer in his chest like it was trying to be released from his cage. 

He tries to ignore the wanting in his heart. Wanting to say more,  _ do  _ more. It’s too much for Bucky to handle.

Instead of speaking his heart out, he rolls over to the other side of the bed, his own bed left unkempt. 

 

“Goodnight, ‘ya punk.” Bucky says, voice trying not to catch at the familiar moniker.

Bucky doesn't get much sleep that night.


	12. respect existence or expect resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no cops at pride just steve and bucky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy pride month!!! sorry i left for about a week lmao  
> my fave ever dan howell recently came out as gay and since then i've just been in a dan-and-phil induced coma but i'm back now! this chapter is short and kinda all over the place but i hope you enjoy aaa

They rise late in the morning, after the breakfast buffet has been packed away and cleaned for lunchtime. 

There’s a flurry of colour and sound outside Steve and Bucky’s the hotel windows, and Steve knows what’s happening a little too quick to his liking. Bucky has a cup of black coffee risen halfway to his lip when the airhorns and chants grow unavoidable.

Bucky watches with open eyes, as he sees a spectacle of young and old, rich and poor, march outside. Steve looks back at Bucky with a soft smile. “Wanna check it out?” Steve asks with a raised eyebrow, 

Bucky looks at Steve through flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, and they’re out of the hotel cafe not long after.

* * *

 

“What did you say this is called?” Bucky asks Steve in a grave voice.

Steve flashes a look Bucky’s way. He has a pair of thick black shades on, and Steve can’t see what Bucky’s eyes reveal. He can, however, know for a fact that Bucky is surveying his unfamiliar surroundings like an animal on the hunt.

 

Steve tips his hat lower, as two teen girls stare at him with uncomfortable concentration. “It’s a pride parade. Fairly new, from what I’ve seen. The first parade was a riot in the fifties.”

Bucky shrugged. “Not long after we went on ice, then.”

 

“Not soon enough.”

 

Steve’s remark seems to hang in the air for an awkward period of time, and Bucky clears his throat. “Why… did you say they’re holdin’ a parade in the heat of June?”

 

Steve looks on at the crowd, when a girl with short hair and a smile strings along another girl with an unfamiliar security in her eyes. “Gay pride, Buck. It’s the first pride they’ve held since Thanos, too.” 

“So, for fairies, batty boys, queers an’ that sorta thing?”

Steve knotted his eyebrows. “I don’t think you should be sayin’ that stuff.”

 

They lean up against the brick wall exterior of their hotel for a moment more. Steve, watching the people. Bucky, watching the colour. Steve loves the diversity of the crowd. Every gender from every colour, creed, and race coming together to support love. He smiles as two boys march fearlessly hand in hand, and applauds a teenage girl who dances and spins with rainbow ribbons in her hair. 

Bucky doesn’t think he’s seen this much colour in his life. There’s so much glitter and colour and  _ life. _ There’s a whole world of people singing and dancing even in the heat of oppression. He loves the way boys and girls alike march with rainbow flags wrapped around their shoulders. He’s enamoured with the glitter on the sweat soaked faces of every boy that passes by. He’s in love with this moment. He feels safe here, and he doesn’t even know why.

 

Steve sees a boy walk up to him with a debonair smile he has tan skin and is almost as tall as him, if half the body mass. “Excuse me, sir. Are you Captain America?”

With a smile, Steve takes off his shades and looks at the boy. “Yeah, I am.”

The boy flings his arms around Steve. From behind him, he can hear Bucky’s snort of indignation. “Thank you. For bringing my boyfriend back.” The boy whispers softly. One more look at the boy across from Steve, and the sunken eyebags along with it—and Steve knows that his boyfriend was lost to Thanos.

 

Steve looked over the boy’s shoulder to see a shorter, paler boy with his arms crossed. The boy’s boyfriend walked over with a subtle sneer on his face. His hair was a raven black, a stark contrast to his alabaster skin. “Do you support gay rights, Mister America?”

The question gives Steve pause, but there’s no debate in his mind. “Of course I do. Would’ve made my childhood a lot easier if I had something like this growing up.” Steve winks, and the two boys walk away with the statement left to interpretation.

 

Bucky is staring intently at a couple when Steve meets his gaze. “What was that about?” Bucky whispers to Steve, though there’s hardly any reason for it. They could shout in the crowd and it’d be heard as a whimper.

 

Steve raised his eyebrows.

“ _ Would’ve made my childhood a lot easier if I had somethin’ like this growing up?  _ What’s that supposed to mean? What would people think?”

Steve never made eye contact with Bucky, instead eyeing the couple Bucky was staring at earlier. They were the same height, one of them with a curly tuft of hair clad in an all black ensemble, and another with bright blue eyes and a multicoloured t-shirt. They were laughing at something on their phones, and kept to the fringes of the parade in a shy reservation. Steve had a feeling he knew why Bucky was staring at the couple, but he kept the musing to himself.

 

Steve glared at Bucky. Maybe he was wrong about his friend, after all. “A little gossip never hurt anyone, Buck.”

“You made them believe you’re  _ gay _ .” Bucky replied, spitting out the last word sourly.

Steve shook his head. “I don’t understand why you’re so worked up about this.”

Bucky looked back at Steve, stammering for the right words to say. “I just… I just… what about Peggy?”

Steve shook his head. “What  _ about  _ Peggy? I loved her, but I don’t think I could’a seen a life with __her.”

“So all that flirting was for nothing?”

Steve sucked in a breath. “Honestly, it just felt nice for you to have a taste of your own medicine. To be the guy that women wanted instead of being cast to the side.”

 

They lapsed into a silence, Bucky fuming and Steve, wondering what had gotten into his _friend_.


	13. to los angeles and beyond

Bucky waits until Steve wakes up. He’s sitting in his bed, and he carefully assesses Steve’s movements. Steve gets up, stretches, and stands up. He looks out the window for half a second and then his eyes dart to the television console.

Bucky stays perfectly still as Steve picks up the two sheets of paper. He flicks through them once, twice, thrice. 

 

“Buck, what the hell is this?” 

Bucky eyes Steve quietly. "Someone called last night offering a first class flight to Los Angeles." He states.

Steve looks at Bucky with an indiscernible expression. Bucky shifts under the weight of Steve's gaze. "Who... called?"

Bucky shrugged. "Scott... Long?"

Bucky hears Steve curse under his breath. "Scott Lang." He says decisively.  

Bucky nods. "He was asking us to come to Los Angeles immediately." He tells Steve in a neutral voice. 

Steve furrows his brow and holds up the two first class tickets. "The flight is scheduled to leave tonight."

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "And?"

"And... we're not prepared." Steve replies.

 

Bucky shrugs, flopping down onto the push duvet and staring up at the ceiling. "The Stevie I know would never turn down an all inclusive vacation to L.A." He says with a smile and a Brooklyn accent, the one that Steve can never say no to.

Steve rolls his eyes. "Fine. But I need to make a phone call first."

* * *

 

Five minutes later, Bucky is sitting pressed up to the wooden door in the bathroom, trying to overhear the conversation in the other room over the sound of the water running.

 

He hears Steve pace around the room. Bucky closes his eyes, trying to dream up the mental picture of Steve in the other room right now. He was wearing a gray shirt, hair still mussed from sleep. He was talking into a smartphone, the kind of phone which was just a piece of glass with no buttons. The kind of phone that the two geriatrics couldn't figure out.

 

"I'm on vacation, Scott." Bucky hears Steve say, as his pacing stops.

Bucky didn't know much about Scott Lang, only that he helped come up with the idea to travel through time, and wisecracked jokes that the other Avengers had made in the heat of their grief and the aftermath of their decisions.

 

He hears Steve talk again. "We're in Chicago. You can't just call us up and expect us to come to L.A whenever you want? What are you doing there, anyways?"

There's a long, tense silence. The bathtub starts to overflow.

"Okay, me and Bucky will be there. Goodbye." Steve replies, hanging up the phone and cursing under a muffled breath.

When Bucky comes out of the bath, skin warm and smooth and smelling like expensive bath products he couldn't remember the name of, Steve smiles at Bucky morosely.

"Looks like we're going to L.A." He says with a wisecracking smile.

* * *

 

"This is Scott's plane?" Bucky asked, taking a seat on the private jet and placing his small duffel of assorted belongings in front of him.

Steve nodded warily, taking a seat right beside Bucky even if they had the whole plane to themselves. "I thought it was a first class flight, but apparently Tony left Scott all of his private jets."

Bucky nodded in understanding, taking a look at the view as the plane made it's ascent. "You know, when I was the Winter Soldier, they wouldn't let me ride a plane."

Steve's eyebrows perk up, staring intently at Bucky. "Why not?"

 

Bucky shrugged, keeping his gaze steady on the window outside. "I guess they didn't want me to have a relapse or something. Maybe they were worried about being in high altitudes would trigger my memories."

Steve nodded, and the conversation slowed to a halt. After some time, Steve cleared his throat and spoke up again. "You had one of those... relapses, right? When we fought at the bridge?"

Bucky tore his gaze from the airplane window and leveled his gaze at Steve. "How did you know that?" He asked, voice giving out.

 

"Some guy that used to be in charge of you told me. When we were fighting him, he used you against me." Steve said coolly, trying to ignore the sharp memory of Brock Rumlow and him dueling in Lagos, Nigeria.

His cold sneer, the way the words rolled off his lips _.Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky _ .

 

Bucky shrugged, looking back at the window. "Of course I recognized you, Stevie. I'd recognize you in any world, in any life."

Steve smiled at the sentiment, but Bucky could feel the blood running in his veins. He took a sharp breath and did something, perhaps the bravest thing that he had ever done in his years on Earth.

 

He looked down to Steve's hand, resting on the shared armrest, and put his own hand on top, effectively linking their two hands together.

If Steve is surprised, he doesn't show it. And if he doesn't want Bucky to hold his hand, he doesn't say so either. And so the two of them sit, hand in hand and trying desperately not to think too much about it.

* * *

 

Steve knew that out of all the superheroes that he had met in his time, Scott Lang was the most interesting. Sure, he had done his fair share of reading files and reconnaissance on their newest recruit back in the day, but what was really interesting was the way Scott could present radical and borderline insane ideas in such a calm tone. He was sure that if Scott hadn't risen to prominence as a superhero, everyone would write his words off as one spoken like a true madman.

He only met Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne for dinner because he owed Scott. If it wasn't for his preposterous sounding time travel idea, half the world would still be dead. (And of course, if it wasn't for Scott, Bucky would still be dead.)

 

He knew it was a bad idea to entertain Scott's words by the time they got to the soup course. Bucky shot a wary glance at Steve, as if to check what they were hearing was true.

Steve blinked. "I'm sorry. Could you say that again?"

 

Scott nodded enthusiastically, talking in between slurps of pumpkin soup. "I think I know how to bring Tony Stark back!" He exclaimed.

Steve took a deep breath as Scott rambled on and on about time stones, Doctor Strange, Vormir, and other manic ideas.

 

Steve took a breath of air. He didn't want to say it, but everyone at the table knew that Scott was just trying to undo his mistakes. Because no matter which way you looked at it, Scott's actions triggered the events that lead to Tony Stark's demise. He still entertained Scott, because they were friends, and because the meal was expensive and tasted well, and Scott paid for it. 

But everyone knew that Scott was half manic, talking about plans that depended on so much, about plans to bring back one person even if it meant accidentally undoing all their hard work. Even Hope van Dyne, Scott's colleague, and romantic interest, looked at Steve with an eyeroll. Indication that even she thought the plan was preposterous.

And so, at the end of the night Bucky and Steve walk back to their hotel, and Bucky lets out a breath of air. 

 

"I have one question." Bucky asks Steve. 

"No, Tony Stark cannot be brought back to life." Bucky's eyes widen. 

"No, not that! I was wondering if Scott and Hope are dating."

Steve raises an eyebrow and shrugs. "I don't know, Buck. Yeah, I think they are."

 

And as the two of them walked home, Scott and Hope finish their dessert back at the restaurant. 

"Are you sure that Steve and Bucky never dated?”

Scott smiled at Hope. “Can you believe it! If they don’t kiss this summer then  _ what  _ was the point of all of this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my poor ironstrange heart wants to write a spinoff once this is done where stephen brings tony back to life lmao


	14. moving day

"Do you like this place?" Steve asked Bucky, from his place on the couch.

Bucky was doing the dishes and looked up at Steve. 

 

It had been a week since they met with Scott Lang, and they were staying at an Airbnb apartment for the last few days. Both of them discussed where they would go next, but there wasn't much of a conversation there. Los Angeles was bright and sunny and was full of forgiveness. Anyone could recognize Captain America from a mile off, but when he was walking with Bucky in the dead of night, he wouldn't cause a stampede like he might've in the east coast.

It went unspoken between the two of them that the apartment was perfect. It had high ceilings and was full of sunlight. There were two bedrooms and staying in the apartment felt normal... almost.

If Steve closed his eyes, they could still be in Brooklyn a century before. Neither of them left the apartment very often, usually just going out for groceries or takeout, but other than that they stayed indoors, watching Netflix and anything but the local news. (Too depressing.)

 

Bucky set down the plate he was drying. "Hm? Yeah, I really like the place. Too bad we've gotta go somewhere else in a few days." He said with a shrug.

Steve stretched himself out onto the length of the couch, lying down on his back and staring up at the ceiling, soaking up the California warmth.

 

"I mean, I could always buy this place." Steve mused with a shrug. He looked around, and his eyes stopped at the windows with the sunlight filtering in. “It has great lighting if ever I decide to pick up painting again.”

Bucky stared at Steve.

Steve turned around, cracking a small smile. "Well, not this exact apartment, but the one above it. I saw a for sale sign when we first booked the place."

Bucky laughed with an imperceptible shake of his head. "Steve, what has gotten into 'ya? Back in Brooklyn we had to pinch our pennies just to get food for the day, and now you're talking about buying a house as if it's nothing."

"Would you rather me not buy the place, or..." Steve trailed off.

 

Bucky laughed again, walking over to the couch. He moved Steve's legs off of the couch and sat beside him, giving Steve a soft look from a century past. "I'm saying, I'd rather you let me take care of half the price, at least."

"Buck, you don't have to do that." Steve said with a roll of his eyes. 

Bucky furrowed his brow. "But I want to. The government pays me military pay, compensation pay, back pay for all the years I was registered as deceased but wasn't actually, and like, a million other types of pay I don't understand. I want to buy this house."

Steve took a look around the apartment, thinking about how the unit above this would soon be theirs. He took a deep sigh and smiled at Bucky. "Alright. Let's do this.  _ Together _ ."

* * *

 

In regular circumstances, buying a house didn't mean going to the bank in the morning and making a withdrawal, and then later in the day going up to the owner and dumping a large stack of money in front of them.

But this was Bucky Barnes and Captain America, and this was no ordinary situation. 

To much their appreciation, the former owner was largely indebted to the likes of the Avengers and instantly allowed them to purchase the house, at a fifteen percent discount, no less.

 

And that was how Bucky and Steve ended up in a fourth floor apartment in Los Angeles with boxes of newly purchased furniture less than a month after Thanos had been defeated.

 

"Did you buy out the entire art store this afternoon?" Bucky asked, dropping a box of easels and oil paints at Steve's feet.

"I'm done with saving the world, so I guess I gotta pick up a new hobby." Steve says morosely.

Bucky smiles and shakes his head, ascending down the stairwell to bring up their newest shipment of houseplants. Steve walks towards the French bay windows, the ones he had quickly grown to love.

 

He decides that he loves Los Angeles.

 

He had only visited the state once in his life, a brief blip in his existence, when Captain America was just a bond-selling mascot and nothing more. A lifetime ago. 

He can't remember much about the city, only that he had no reason to revisit it in the twenty first century and after he fought Iron Man avoided the city at all costs, because New York was Captain America territory, and California was Iron Man's domain. 

But now that he's here, he loves it.

 

He loves the way the sun shines all the time, the way it's always warm and he never has to check the weather forecast. He loves the fact that this apartment is the first purchase he made without S.H.I.E.L.D breathing down his back. He loves the freedom, the way he can walk into Target and pick out furniture that he really likes, not furniture that an intern wanted him to like.

 

Bucky ascends the stairs, and Steve smiles. It's their last moving day, and Bucky's hair is tied into a bun and his white shirt is filled with dirt and stains. 

Steve thinks he could live in this moment forever.

 

"Where should I put the plants?" Bucky asks, jolting Steve out of his thoughts.

 

Steve looks around. "Near the windows, I guess." He says, as he walks over to the kitchen.

 

Taking a look around, the place is everything he dreamt of. He loves the tall ceilings and the dark wood floors. He loves the bright white walls filled with photos of him and Bucky the Smithsonian gave back. He loves the big, uncomplicated flat screen television that the guy at Costco patiently explained to him how to operate.

 

He loves his room, the dark sheets and warm duvets. He loves the shelves and shelves of books and sketchbooks, all empty, all a promise. He loves the bright green leafy palms, the kind that would never grow back in New York.

He loves Bucky's room too, he loves that Bucky picked out all the furniture. He loves that Bucky went from someone who could barely decide what he wanted to wear in the morning to someone he argued about paint chips with in Home Depot. He loves that Bucky's room is dark and warm and is filled with an arsenal of weapons larger than the a small country's army base, because it makes him feel safe.

He loves the kitchen, where Bucky cooks all the time. (Bucky tells Steve, now that they're rich he can learn to cook all the things he read about in the books.)

He loves the living room, most of all. Him and Bucky spend every night there. Almost a hundred years ago, him and Bucky would do the same.

 

A hundred years ago, Bucky would have been at an open window in the Brooklyn summer smoking a cigar, and Steve would be drawing him from the couch. But these days, the two of them curled up underneath a thickly woven blanket and watch all the trashy documentaries about the life and times of Steven Grant Rogers.

They laugh at all the inconsistencies, all the "prime sources" they interview, when it's clear that no one has a clue about who Captain America truly is. They laugh at the way they try to paint Bucky, as a hero and a true blooded American soldier when in reality, he was so much more than that.

 

Bucky was more than what the documentaries said. He loved dancing and the American dream but he also loved art. He loved attending the art classes just to see Steve draw. He may have wanted a wife in the twenties but if any one of them would have been a stay at home parent, it would've been him. His parents went to Sunday mass all his life and he was an altar boy, but when Steve said he wasn't quite sure he believed in a God, Bucky was relieved, because he didn't either.

 

And so every night when the two men out of time fall asleep on the couch, Steve knows that the man who wanted a wife and kids went in the ice long ago. And somewhere deep inside, he knows that James Barnes, a man that wanted a wife and kids and a picket fence home, died when he fell off the train. Maybe that version of Steve and that James Barnes died, so the two of them live.

 

And so they do. They live every day of their lives.

 

Steve paints. He paints the different wars he was in. He paints the Red Skull and Arnim Zola and HYDRA and Ultron. He paints the Chitauri and the Avengers. He paints Hulk and Thor and all the angels and saints. He paints Thanos and Spider-Man and everything, and there's still not enough hours in the day to capture the life he lived.

Steve paints, and Bucky gardens. He waters the plants and goes on jogs and finds up and coming places to eat every dinner. He listens to music and blasts it through the speakers when Steve paints. It's not an easy life, not with the constant nightmares and the odd mourner that comes across them in the streets, but it is a good life.

 

And so, one night many months down the road Steve waits outside the door as Bucky fishes for his keys in his pockets.

 

And then Bucky turns around in that unflattering hallway light and looks up at Steve, with a halo of light atop his head.

"Did you mean it," Bucky asks, finally saying the question on his mind all these months. "when you passed on your shield to Sam Wilson?"

Steve smiled, a pain and a truth wrapped into one. "I'm retired."

"I am too." Bucky says with a grin, unlocking the apartment door.

"Onto the future, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok lmao i KNOW this chapter has very strong 'last chapter' vibes but omg pls theres gonna be so many chapters after this!!! they havent even kissed yet!!!!!!!


	15. wants, needs, and routine

Bucky didn't like routine.

 

When he was younger, he would sneak out of class just to walk down to the pier. He would rewear the same white t-shirt until it was brown and muddy because he refused to do the laundry. 

He gave his mother hell, but he never, ever stuck to routine. What he did one day he wouldn't do the next. He would wake up at dawn on a weekend and sleep in so late he'd miss the bus on Thursdays. He would wear his baseball cap on the back of his head and wear his jerseys inside out. 

 

And when Bucky Barnes was twelve years old, he vowed to never, ever get a job.

Jobs, you see, were society's way of integrating everyone into the system. Jobs were the death of dreams. Adulthood was the murderer of sporadicism.

 

Much later, in a California apartment many decades down the line, Bucky realizes that he stuck to that vow. He never did apply for a job, and it drove his mother crazy.

The closest thing he got to a job was when a letter from the US Army came in the post demanding him to sign up for the rich man's war.

He never got a choice. And he never got a choice to become the Winter Soldier, either.

* * *

 

Three months later, Steve and Bucky have assimilated themselves into some sort of routine. They wake up early and barely even sleep because super-serumed soldiers just don't need the same amount of sleep as regular people. They'll go on runs for hours at a time, until both of them are soaked in sweat and smell like daylight.

They eat the best food money can buy, because they remember the times when they didn't have any money, when Steve's paychecks from working at the grocery were barely paying the electrical bills. They're paid all sorts of money and they give it to all kinds of charity, but Steve and Bucky won't ever be hungry.

 

It's a random Thursday in September and Steve is painting in the living room. Across from him is Bucky who is doing the dishes and drying them with a cheesecloth.

The room is quiet except for the soft jazz music that Steve has on a record player. (He doesn't quiet understand how Spotify works.) 

 

Bucky breathes in deeply, soaking in the warmth he can never have enough of.

 

And then he smashes a plate.

Steve jolts back, staring at Bucky with an adamant expression in his eyes.

Bucky takes another breath and smashes another plate.

He doesn't know how long this goes on for, but he continues breaking every piece of ceramic and glass cups he can get his hands on until he feels Steve's presence at his side.

Bucky sinks down to the floor and rakes hands through his hair. "I think I need a job." He says.

* * *

 

"You can't get a job." Steve says, much later in the afternoon. The glass hadn't been swept from the floor but the two of them have moved into the dining room instead, sharing a bottle of wine between the two of them. (Not like it helps, since both of them can't even get drunk.)

The sun is setting quickly and it's casting golden shadows on Steve's face. Bucky rolls his eyes. "Why not?"

 

"Just because the war is over doesn't mean that you're not a target anymore."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Steve shrugs, and takes a long swig from the bottle of wine. "I dunno. I mean sure, go get a job, I guess."

 

Bucky raises his eyebrows as he moves to get up from his seat.

 

"You did make a promise though." Steve said with a shrug.

Bucky turns his back to face Steve with an imperceptible shake of his head. "What?"

"You promised to your mom that you'll never get a job." Steve said, with the same foolish grin that Bucky can't get enough of. 

Bucky side eyes Steve. "Do you want pizza for dinner?"

* * *

 

"I don't understand why you don't want me to get a job." Bucky asks, through several bites of margherita pizza.

Steve scoffs. "What would you put on the resume?"

Bucky stays silent.

"And besides, you hate routine." 

"Yeah. And this is starting to feel like a routine!" Bucky exclaimed with a hesitant laugh.

 

Steve chuckles, eyes gleaming at his friend. "It's better than being in the war, though."

Bucky shakes his head, the grin he's always fighting to keep off his face rising to the surface once more. "The food's a lot better."

That makes the two of them laugh.

 

"Besides," Bucky continues as the laughter dies down. "We're always in a war in one way or another." He says with a shrug.

Steve exhales. "Do you really think that, Buck?"

"Don't you?"

 

Steve stares at Bucky for a long time, and neither of them dare break eye contact, because they've known each other their whole lives and neither one of them will back down from a fight. Bucky doesn't know what Steve is searching for. Is it fear? Hesitation? Or another feeling, one that neither of them are prepared to admit?

 

Steve smiles and breaks the eye contact, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I'm gonna go to sleep. Goodnight, Bucky."

Steve stands up and puts his plate in the sink, staring at the ground to check if there were any stray glass shards on the floor.

"G'night, Steve." Bucky mutters, long after Steve has gone to his room.

* * *

 

It's one in the morning, and as always Bucky is still awake. He rakes his hand through his hair and frowns. Because deep down, he knows that he doesn't actually want to get a job.

 

What he wants is to get out of this damn apartment. He wants to be alone, but not really. He wants to live a normal life, but he doesn't know how to do it. He wants to fall in love, but he doesn’t know how it’s done. 

He also wants to go see a cardiologist, because his heart keeps beating too fast and too loud for his liking. It’s be a real shame if that’s how he goes down, especially after everything that happened.

 

And he wants Steve to stop sitting so near him, but he wasn’t quite sure why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of a filler chapter of gay internal monologuing, mostly bc the next chapter gonna be spicy


	16. half in love with easeful death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> darkling i listen; and, for many a time   
> i have been half in love with easeful Death,   
> call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,   
> to take into the air my quiet breath.  
> -john keats

Bucky was out to grab the missing groceries, and for once Steve didn't want him in the house.

 

He knew it wasn't actually a sin, nor did they ever sit down and come to an agreement, but what he was doing still felt like cheating.

Steve sat down on the couch, heart beating heavily. He wishes that Bucky doesn't come back to their apartment any time soon, because he would have an impossible time explaining the situation. He couldn't bear to have to tell Bucky why he's doing what he is doing.

 

And yet, they never actually said anything, but it was an unspoken promise between them.

He sighed and rubbed the space in between his eyes, because it was now or never. He saw a chance and he took it, because he might never have another one like this again.

No matter how much Steve wanted to do it, he couldn't move off of the couch, because of Bucky. Because of what this meant to Bucky. (Whatever... this was.)

 

_ Fuck it _ , Steve decided, at long last. He sat down and took a deep breath, pressing a hesitant finger over a button.

* * *

 

The door creaked open earlier than Steve expected, and he barely has any time to cover up what he's done before Bucky sees him. Even if he could come up with a semi-certain lie, his face would reveal the truth. 

"Are you watching the next episode without me?" Bucky asked, a twinge of irritation in his voice.

 

Steve rolled his eyes, because while they never explicitly decided to watch this Netflix show together, it was an unspoken truth that they watched one episode after dinner every night. "I couldn't wait until you got home!" Steve replied, turning around to face Bucky.

 

"They're revealing who the murderer in this episode is and— _is that a knife in your arm_?" Steve exclaimed.

 

Bucky frowned and waved Steve off. "It's just a tiny stab." He says, even though Steve could see the blood beading off of his jacket, Bucky's face pallid and his breathing heavy.

 

"Why are you here? Call an ambulance!" Steve replied.

Bucky shrugged, setting down the grocery bag on the floor and moving to the kitchen, grabbing the first aid kit from the bottom drawer. "I didn't have my cellphone on me. And our house was closer than the hospital." 

"What the hell happened?" Steve asked.

 

"Are you going to help me pull this knife out of my shoulder or what?" Bucky asked exasperatedly.

Steve let out a breath of air. "Fine."

 

He helped Bucky strip off his jacket and undershirt, now quickly being soaked in blood. Steve then lay down Bucky's arm onto their kitchen counter. 

He examined the knife carefully. Steve was by no means a doctor, but after years of being on the battlefield and needing to tend to both others injuries and his own, he had a somewhat comprehensive knowledge of injuries that were life threatening and injuries that would just leave a scar and would require a deathly amount of painkiller.

The blade of the knife embedded into Bucky’s shoulder gleamed brightly against the kitchen lights. Steve took another look at it, and sighed.

 

Bucky’s eyes followed Steve as he paced around the room. “Well?” He asked.

Steve looked at Bucky and blinked. “ _ Well, _ ” he began, “You got here right away and it doesn’t look like you’ve lost that much blood.” He said, trying to speak in a measured way that he hoped would mask how absolutely hopeless he was at this type of thing. He held Bucky’s hand, and it felt cold and clammy.

 

He tried to think back to his Army days when they gave him a crash course on first aid. Bucky was incredibly fatigued and was slightly dazed. That meant that Bucky hadn’t lost a fatal amount of blood yet, but time was ticking.

He took out a spool of bandages and began wrapping it haphazardly around Bucky’s arm. “The first thing we need to do is control the blood loss.” Steve mumbled, more to himself than to Bucky.

 

The two of them then began the arduous procedure of pressing down tightly around the knife wound and wrapping bandages around it. It was helping the blood loss slow significantly, but Steve was still at a loss on what to do with the knife sticking out of Bucky’s shoulder.

 

“I think we need to go to the hospital.” Steve admitted, looking into the blue of Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky glared at Steve. “I’ve had injuries worse than this.”

“Yeah, well unless you can pull the knife out of your shoulder yourself, we need to go to the hospital.”

 

Bucky rolled his eyes.

* * *

 

The sun was rising and Steve blinked, downing his second cup of cheap vending machine coffee. When he was in the army, he could have drank any type of coffee, even if it was filtered from newspaper and served at room temperature. He had to admit, having a french press and fancy espresso machines have made him go soft, and now his face soured at the unpleasant aftertaste.

Bucky should be coming out of the operating theatre by now, and he had been pacing in the hospital waiting room for hours.

It was a mad dash to the emergency room once Bucky finally relented and allowed Steve to drive him. Steve tried to be upset at Bucky's reluctance to go to a doctor, but he couldn't blame him, not after what HYDRA put him through.

The team of doctors hauled him off into a closed off room at nine in the evening, and now it was well into the early hours of the morning.

 

A door swung open, and Steve was face to face with a doctor no older than him. 

"Mister Rogers?" She asked.

Steve looked at the doctor. "That's me." He said with a smile, exhaustion on the tendrils of his grin.

"Mister Barnes should be waking up from the anaesthetic by now. If you want, you can visit him in his room."

 

Steve nodded and mumbled a thanks, trying not to sprint down the hall.

 

Bucky woke up fifteen minutes after Steve entered the room, eyes fluttering open to see brilliant blue ones greeting his own.

 

"Morning." Steve said with a sarcastic grin."

Bucky smiled softly. "Mornin'. Apparently I got stabbed or something."

Steve chuckled. "What happened, anyways?"

Bucky tried to shrug, but coughed as the movement caused him pain. "Some guy tried to jump me on the way back from the grocery. Seriously, you should see the state I left him in."

 

Steve smiled. They talked a little bit more, and then Bucky's face paled.

 

"Steve?"

"Yeah?" 

"I can't feel my arm." Bucky replied.

Steve could feel his heart hammering in his chest. He didn't know if he could make it through another amputation, nonetheless Bucky. "Which one?"

Bucky looked at Steve with a bewildered expression. "What do you mean  _ which one _ ? The one I got stabbed at! The metal one!" Bucky exclaimed.

Steve let out a sigh of relief as the two of them chuckled. "Thank God. I thought you were... talking about your real one."

Bucky shook his head with. "Nah. I think the guy ripped out some of the wires in my arm. Does that mean we've got to go to Wakanda now?"

 

Steve smiled but shook his head. "The Wakandans have closed themselves off from the rest of the world while they rebuild after the battle five years ago. But I do have a better idea." He said with a grin.

 

And that was how Steve and Bucky were standing outside of Stark Laboratories in New York less than twelve hours later.

* * *

 

Steve pushed the door open, grinning at the receptionist. "I'm here to see Doctor Banner, please."

The receptionist took one look at Bucky and then another look at Steve. "Right this way." She said, as they walked through a series of detectors.

Steve vaguely remembered them from his stay at the Stark Tower, a throng of AI detectors scanning each individual who passed through the doors better than any security guard could have ever done.

 

It was strange being escorted inside the Stark Tower after everything that had happened. It was the first Avengers facility. It was Tony's home.

Steve gulped, trying not to feel like he was intruding on a ghost's grounds.

 

They made their way up to the eighth floor, where Steve could see Bruce Banner's towering figure before they approached him.

 

Steve smiled at his old friend. "Hi, Bruce."

Bruce turned around quickly, staring at Steve. "Steve, what are you doing here?"

Steve sheepishly motioned at Bucky. "We need a little help."

 

Five minutes after Steve and Bucky explained the situation to Bruce, Bucky found himself on the second operating table in twenty four hours.

 

"This will probably hurt more than whatever the doctors in the hospital did when they were fixing up the stab wound." Bruce warned Bucky, as a team of nurses began to put local anaesthetic around the affected area.

"We’ll have to put you to sleep again, since I have to reattach all of the wires to the severed nerves one by one." Bruce added.

 

Bucky nodded slowly, as the nurses began to put the nitrous oxide mask over him in order to begin the sedation process.

 

"Thanks for doing this, Bruce." Steve said, scratching at the back of his neck. "I wasn't even sure if you knew how to do it."

Bruce shrugged. "Me and Tony developed a lot of prosthetic limbs around the time we were messing with Ultron. There was a bit of a sharp learning curve, but I’ll be able to operate on Bucky successfully.”

After a lapse of silence, Bucky called out to Steve. “Hey Steve?”

“Yeah, Bucky?”

 

“Don’t think this changes the fact that you watched an episode without me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the netflix show steve and bucky were watching was broadchurch, obviously


	17. death answers before it is asked

When Bucky Barnes awoke from surgery, the light had shifted in his hospital room and there was half a second where he thought that his arm wasn’t metal but flesh and blood and bone. He felt young again. He felt like he was half awake in a dream that was neither good nor bad.

And then when his senses came to him slowly and then all at once, he heard arguing. More specifically, Steve and Bruce arguing.

 

“You should have sent something in the mail.”

“We didn’t have your address!” Bruce exclaimed.

 

Bucky blinked slowly, inhaling a deep breath of antiseptic ridden air. “Did I miss something?” He mumbled quietly.

Steve spun on his heel, and at first glance at Bucky his face turned from angry to  _ soft _ . “Nothing important. How are you feeling?”

Bucky looked back and forth at Steve and Bruce. Bruce looked tired from the operation, but  _ agitated  _ more than anything. “What were you talking about?” He asked insistently.

 

Steve sighed and raked his hands through his hair. He turned around and took one glance at Bruce, who took that as the cue to exit the room.

 

When the room had at last lapsed into silence, Steve looked at Bucky. “They recovered Nat’s body.”

“What?”

Steve dropped his gaze and looked down at the ground defeatedly. “Hank Pym and his foundation donated any remaining Pym particles they had in their possession to the scientists at Stark Tower for time travel research. They got Nat’s body back from Vormir.”

Bucky blinked, as he watched his heart monitor vitals slowly escalate. “How?”

Steve shrugged. “They went back into that moment just long enough for her to be brought back to the present time. They couldn’t bring her back to life, or else we never would have gotten the soul stone.”

 

Bucky nodded, taking this information in. A slow realization began to creep up on him. “Was that why Nick Fury was calling you?”

Steve nodded in agreement.

 

Two weeks ago Steve and Bucky were curled up on the couch of their apartment when Steve’s phone began very rapidly buzzing with text alerts and phone call notifications. When Steve glanced at the phone and saw Nick Fury’s caller ID, he shut the phone off and locked it in a drawer.

Bucky raised his eyebrows as he watched Steve move around the apartment. “Aren’t you going to pick that up?” He asked.

Steve shook his head. “I’m retired. That means no more S.H.I.E.L.D missions.”

 

“They were calling to ask if I wanted to be the one to go to Vormir and recover Nat’s body.” Steve told Bucky.

“Shit.”

After a lapse of silence, Bucky spoke up again. “Who went to Vormir, then?”

“Clint.” Steve replied.

“Shit.” Bucky said again, as they sat in silence at the implication of the events.

 

That meant a funeral. And a proper burial.

 

“Me and Natasha were friends, you know.” Bucky quipped, breaking the silence once more.

Steve raised his eyebrows dubiously. “What?”

Bucky nodded, a mischievous smile creeping up onto his face. “She met me down in Wakanda a couple of times during my recovery.”

* * *

 

It was one of those rare days in Wakanda where it rained.

Bucky had come to the conclusion that he liked the rain. Especially when it was warm and the Earth seemed to greet rain with a grin. He also liked rain for the fact that it meant he got to stay in one of the Royal Suites in the Wakandan palace, since his usual hut of straw and clay was deemed unlivable in the conditions they were in.

He was looking out the window and watching the movements of the sprawling city when he felt someone standing behind him.

 

“ _ ты еще знаешь, как говорить по русски?”  _ The voice said, as Bucky turned around to see the grinning face of Natasha Romanoff leaning up against his doorframe.

His mind instantly went to translate her question.  _ Do you still know how to speak Russian _ , she asked.

 

Bucky smiled sourly. “ _ это единственное, что они не могут удалить из моего разума. _ ” He replied.

_ It is the only thing that they cannot remove from my mind.  _ Bucky said with a sheepish expression.

 

Natasha clicked her tongue and took a seat on Bucky’s four poster bed. “ _ не стыдись _ ,” she began with a grin. “ _ теперь у нас с вами есть наш маленький секретный шпионский язык. _ ”

_ Don’t be ashamed. Now we have our own little secret spy language. _

 

Bucky chuckles as he takes a seat at the desk. “Why are you here, Natasha?” He asks, reverting back to his native English.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “I’m here on business. Official business.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. 

“I’m negotiating trade deals between Wakanda and a monarchy of a very small island nation.” Natasha said with a grin.

 

“Well, you sure know how to keep busy.” Bucky replied.

“Just waiting for the final documents now, and a little bird told me that your room was just down the hall.” Natasha nodded, as she took a look around the room. “Does Steve visit often?” She asks.

“Once every other week or so. He used to visit every week, but the nurses said it wasn’t good for my recovery.”

 

“Aren’t you in ice most of the time?” Natasha asks.

Bucky nods. “He still visits even if I’m in the ice. Apparently he’ll just sit there and talk to me for a few hours before leaving. But when I am unfrozen he always makes sure to call.”

 

Natasha stares at Bucky coolly, and he can see her eyes calculating something he doesn’t comprehend. “He has a beard now.”

 

Bucky blinks. “Well, he’s not the only one that can grow a beard.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Do you like it?”

“Like what?”

“Steve’s beard.”

“Why would it matter if I  _ like  _ Steve’s beard?”

 

Natasha shrugs, standing up and pacing around the room. It’s such an innocuous action that Bucky had to remind himself that he was looking eye to eye with one of the most renowned assassins of their time.

Then again, Bucky looks eye to eye with one of the most renowned assassins of their time every moment he looks in the mirror.

 

She spins on her heel and begins to walk out the room. “It doesn’t matter at all!” She calls out, heels clicking down the marble floors. “Not one bit!” She exclaims.

 

(Bucky really, really likes Steve’s beard.)

(But he also really, really likes Steve clean shaven.)

(He suspects that he just really, really likes Steve.)

* * *

 

Six months later, Bucky’s feeding one of the wild Wakandan goats when he sees the infamous Black Widow saunter up to him in her all black apparel.

 

“Shouldn’t you be riding horses?” Natasha calls out, as she walks up to Bucky.

“Why are you here this time?”

“No, seriously. Isn’t equine assisted therapy all the rage? Before it was occupational therapy, but now  _ everyone _ wants to ride a horse and cure their PTSD.” Natasha replies.

 

Bucky stares blankly at Natasha.

 

Natasha chuckles. “Okay, fine. I’m here because some spies of a country were found with an illegal shipment of crates full of illegally smuggled Wakandan Vibranium. The country is large. Very large. Like, the largest country in the world.”

“Okay, I get it.”

 

“Shouldn’t you be riding horses?” Natasha asks again.

Bucky lowers his eyebrows. “I don’t think they have horses in Wakanda.”

 

Natasha shrugs. “Too bad. They had horses where I grew up. We didn’t use them for riding though.”

“Where did you grow up?” Bucky asked.

Natasha waved Bucky off. “It doesn’t matter. Where did you grow up?”

“Brooklyn.” He replied.

  
“Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers were inseparable on and off the battlefield.” Natasha quoted.

Bucky nodded. “That’s me.”

“What was it like growing up with Captain America?”

Bucky looked at Natasha dubiously.

 

Natasha’s eyes lit up. “I’m not kidding! I really want to know. Y’know, even Russians knew about the infamous  _ Captain America _ .” She said with a shrug.

 

“It’s called anterograde amnesia.” Bucky blurted out suddenly, as if he had been trying to keep it inside of him all this time. 

“That’s how HYDRA brainwashed me. They wiped my memory, but only of the missions I did. Keeping me in ice helped me forget all my childhood memories and anything I had before HYDRA took me. But now that I’ve been out of the ice, I remember everything.” Bucky smiled, thinking back to the past.

 “I never grew up with  _ Captain America _ ,” Bucky began. “I grew up with Steve Rogers. Even when he asked me to march into the battlefield, I knew I wasn’t marching with a superhero, I was marching with my friend. We were inseparable on and off the battlefield, that much is true. But the documentaries and films don’t do it justice. We had nobody and nothing. We were two poor boys living in a world where it felt we didn’t belong. We were more than friends. We were each other’s better halves.”   
  


Natasha smiled, a cocky grin that Bucky didn’t like the look of. She took a look at her wristwatch. “I think it’s about time I got up there,” she said, pointing to the Wakandan palace. “Nice talking with you, Buck.” Natasha said, patting Bucky on the shoulder and walking away.

 

Several steps away, Natasha turns around and hollers after Bucky. “Oh and Bucky? I was an only child.” Natasha decidedly said. “But if I had a brother, I’d like to think he looks a lot like you.”

 

It’s only when the sun goes down does Bucky realise that Natasha is the second person to call him  _ Buck  _ without making his skin crawl.

* * *

 

It’s three months before the end of the world, but Bucky doesn't know that yet.

He’s wearing one of those heat inducing blankets that the nurses give him every time they defrost him from cryo when he sees the telltale figure of Natasha Romanoff sitting at one of the desks.

 

Bucky won’t lie, he had grown to like Natasha’s visits. She reminded him of his younger sister, but with the maturity and experience that he knows she would have never had.

Natasha comes to be like the older sister Bucky had always wanted.

 

“Do you even have clearance to be here?” Bucky asked deliriously, still groggy from coming out of cryo.

Natasha shrugged. “I’m just passing time.”

“Why are you here this time?”

 

“We found some more alien tech in Missouri and decided to give it to Wakanda for research. Y’know, Vibranium and stuff.”

Bucky nodded, even if he didn’t know  _ vibranium and stuff. _

 

“What’s being frozen like a popsicle like?” Natasha asked.

Bucky looked at Natasha with a blank face. “Cold.”

That makes Natasha chuckle, which makes Bucky laugh.

 

“Maybe I’ll just freeze myself so I’ll never die.”

Bucky grinned. “Смерть отвечает прежде, чем ее спросят.” He said morosely.

It was a popular Russian saying, one that Bucky had heard a million times while in captivity and one that he was sure Natasha had heard a million times more.

_ Death answers before it is asked. _

 

That makes Natasha’s face pale, but her grin is still as wide as ever. “Would you like me to ask the lab techs if they can inject your metal arm with a bunch of creepy alien substances?”

Bucky chuckles, but shakes his head. “No thanks, I’m good. It feels like I went to bed one day in the nineties and woke up in 2012. Next thing I know it, apparently aliens have come and gone.”

 

Natasha clucked her tongue. “You should’ve seen it. Mister America did a great job on those Chitauri.”

“Yeah, him and all the other Avengers.” Bucky replied. “How many of there are you?”

Natasha pursed her lips in concentration. “Well the  _ first  _ first Avengers had six of us. You’ve met me and Steve, and then there’s Clint whose basically modern day  _ Robin Hood _ . And Tony, of course.”

Bucky’s face fell at the memory of the state in which he left Tony Stark in.

 

“The only two you haven’t met are  _ the Hulk  _ and Thor.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows in question. “The Hulk is a big green ball of destruction who could like, tear through a whole city.” Natasha explained, face softening. “But when he’s good ‘ol Bruce Banner, he’s a really smart guy. He’s pretty nice, too.”

 

Bucky hears Natasha’s phone chime as she stands up, smiling at Bucky. “I think you’ll like Thor, he’s just your type.” She said, walking out of the room.

“Tall, blonde, and handsome.” Natasha said, the door sliding shut after her.

 

That was the last time Bucky ever saw Natasha again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah fuck you marvel i'm giving natasha romanoff the funeral she DESERVES


	18. one for the road

Bucky gets discharged from Stark Tower’s hospital wing later in the day. They spend the time in between later and now doing the same things that they would have done in their Los Angeles apartment.

Bucky watches the Netflix episode Steve saw without him, and Steve draws Bucky watching television. 

 

“When’s the funeral?” Bucky asked.

Steve shifts in his seat, picking up his phone and checking the weather forecast. It was scheduled to rain by the time Bucky was discharged, but Steve didn’t mind all that much. New York rains had become like a second skin to him. “Tomorrow, I think.”

 

“They didn’t send us an invitation?”

“They texted us.”

Bucky frowns. “Why does no one use the letters anymore. Or e-mail? In the nineties e-mail was very popular.

“Were you around in the nineties?”

Bucky nods with a grin. “Yes I was. E-mail was all the rage. Now it’s texting and snap-chatting and God knows what.”

 

Steve watches as Bucky’s face sours, and it makes him chuckle.

 

“Do you have a suit?” Steve asks.

“Do you?”

Steve shakes his head. “I have the one I wore to Tony’s funeral, but it’s back in L.A.”

Bucky shrugs. “We’ll just go and get a suit later today then.”

Steve nods as they lapse into silence.

 

Some time later, Bucky turns on his side and looks at Steve intently from his spot in the hospital bed. “Do you miss her? Natasha?”

Steve sighs. “We didn’t know each other very long, nor did we see much of each other. But whenever we met, it felt like we’ve known each other our whole lives.”

Bucky nods. “She understood me really well.”

“Did she do that thing where she glared at you and you could tell that she  _ knew  _ something about you, but you didn’t know what?” Steve asked.

“All the goddamn time!” Bucky exclaimed, as the two of them erupted into laughter.

When they quieted down, Steve stared at the floor. “I really miss her. I don’t think I’ve gotten the proper time to mourn. When I see her body tomorrow, it’ll finally feel real, you know? To see her body so still and unmoving… I don’t know if I could do it.”

Bucky frowned. Because he wasn’t sure he could do it either.

* * *

 

“Have you seen my new arm?” Bucky asked Steve as they walked out of the Stark Tower later that day. He swung it around for Steve to see.

It was made of a shinier, more flexible metal. Bruce had told Bucky that he made the fingertips more responsive and the ability to touch and feel certain temperatures more accurate. Aesthetically speaking, it had a blue and gold inlay with a red star on his shoulder. If Bucky closed his eyes and put on a long sleeved shirt, he could pretend like his arm was really there.

 

Steve smiled, looking at the easygoing expression on Bucky’s face, as the rain began pelting them in small, cold droplets of water.

 

“Does it feel like a real arm?” Steve asks Bucky.

Bucky nods with a grin. 

 

Steve smiles. “Now you can take all the girls dancing like you used to do. Maybe even settle down and find a Mrs. Barnes.” He teased.

 

Bucky chuckles, but stops dead in his tracks. They’ve walked two blocks down now, and were just coming up on Central Park. He has a grin on his face, but not for the reason Steve might think. And perhaps for the first time, Steve realizes with a startling fear just how tired Bucky looks.

And perhaps Steve is tired too. They’re both tired of running. Tired of living half lives when they know they can be made whole.

 

“Steve Rogers,” Bucky begins with a smirk. “What you are is a fucking idiot.” He says, grabbing Steve by the collar and kissing him so hard that time stops ticking.

 

The action is so quick and abrupt and it feels almost out of nowhere, but once the shock rolls over Steve, it makes  _ sense _ . It’s the last piece of the puzzle slotting into his soul. It was the missing part that was taken away from him when he took Erskine’s serum. Here, in Bucky’s arms, everything made sense.

 

Steve felt an overwhelming feeling of completeness, or coming home.  _ Ah,  _ he thinks.  _ There you’ve been all my life. _

 

This was not just some random person he met off the street. This was not some girl that had caught his attention for a few days. This was  _ Bucky _ . And maybe he had seen it coming since the day came back from returning the stones, but their story began long before that. It began long before the fight with Tony Stark, or meeting on the bridge. Their story goes way back. It comes before time itself.

 

Their story is one for the ages, and it goes so far back that it cannot be contained in one novel alone. It’s a story of life, one for the times and ones for the road.

It’s a love story. It’s the love story of the century.

 

And so, when Bucky pulls away, Steve is all blushy and flustered and full of raw nerves and adrenaline.

 

“It’s about goddamn time you did that.” Steve tells Bucky, who has his metal arm firmly wrapped around Steve’s waist.

Bucky grins. “How long have you been waiting for me to do that?”

“October 1928. We were playing on the playground and I decided that I wouldn’t mind if you put your lips on mine.” Steve said quietly, a little white lie.

 

He didn’t know how long he had wanted to kiss Bucky, but he still felt like nothing changed. The lazy, amicable way he unabashedly stared at Bucky’s face… that was no different. Neither was the way the thought of Bucky stirred something deep in Steve, something warm and curious.

Maybe there was no one specific moment when Steve found out he’d like to kiss Bucky, because knowing Bucky had been ingrained so deeply into his very being.

 

“How long have you wanted to do that?” Steve asked with a grin.

“Since the day I met you.” Bucky said, lying to Steve’s face.

 

The truth of the matter was, Bucky didn’t quite remember when he first found out he loved Steve. Because even if he had all his memories in tact, he forgot things just like how the average person would forget what they had for breakfast five years ago that day. Bucky simply forgot when liking Steve crossed the line into loving. Maybe loving Steve was something he had always done.

Both of them smiled, both knowing they lied and the other lied to them but not really caring. Because they were here, and they were now. Their whole lives had come up to this point, so there was no use rushing it. Because they were made for each other, and they always have been.

 

And Steve was happy. And his heart was full for the first time in his life. 

And at last, the war he felt he would always be facing had finally been won.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading <3
> 
> special announcement: this story will be done within the next week or so but i will be writing a prequel! stay tuned x
> 
> and if you do feel like this kiss was out of the blue/took you by surprise, just remember that steve and bucky's story had begun long before this fic ;)


	19. vita in morte sumus inveniet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings include minor mentions of the following: self harm, suicidal thoughts, and destructive eating habits   
> chapter title translation: we find life in death

After an evening of suit shopping and dinner and wine, Steve and Bucky walk side by side in Manhattan with a grin, palms bumping into each other.

 

“Do you have a place to stay?” Bucky asks Steve. The wine felt heavy and warm inside his belly, but both of them didn’t have the ability to get drunk for a long time.

Steve nods, grabbing Bucky by the hand. “I’ve got a place just around here. There’s one in the Stark Tower, but I’m pretty sure it’s like a research facility now. And of course, there’s our place in Brooklyn, but the Smithsonian wants to make it a museum or something. So S.H.I.E.L.D set me up with a place in Manhattan. I tried telling them I wanted a place in Brooklyn.”

That makes Bucky laugh, as he squeezes Steve’s hand. He wasn’t sure what they were doing. They’ve been holding hands and been generally more touchy with each other, but there was this big unforgiving unknown lurking in between the two of them.

  
  


Ten minutes later, Bucky surveys Steve’s apartment in Manhattan. He narrows his eyebrows. Ignoring the visible layer of dust, it wasn’t a bad place. “It looks… nice.” He tells Steve, who walks to the far end of the room to flick a light switch on.

Steve scoffs. “You don’t need to be polite. I’m pretty sure that some S.H.I.E.L.D intern just picked the rooms out of an IKEA catalogue.”

 

Bucky grins, as he pulls open the curtain to reveal the New York skyline. Steve wanders into the bathroom to go brush his teeth as Bucky pokes around the apartment.

 

He goes through his standard list of protocol that has been wired into him as deeply as breathing or walking. He checks all the possible exits, and stashes away his arsenal of knives and pistols he always has on him. He sweeps the place for hidden cameras and listening devices, and makes sure that none of the mirrors can be seen two ways.

Bucky finishes his exhaustive list of safety procedure at the same time he hears the shower stop running. He walks down the hall and swings open the master bedroom door. He scowls.

 

“Steve?” Bucky yells from the doorframe of the bedroom.

 

Steve pokes his head out of the bathroom door and takes a step into the hall. Bucky surveys Steve, who stepped out of the bathroom with slightly tousled hair and a soft cotton shirt that looks well worn and smells like the laundry detergent his mother used. It takes all the effort in his body to stop all the blood from rushing to the tips of his ears, his cheeks, and  _ other places _ . Bucky frowns at Steve instead. 

 

“Did you know this apartment only has one room?”  Bucky asks.

Steve looks down at the ground and Bucky sees his face reddened. (He had grown to like flustered Steve, it was a side of him he thought died in the ice.)

 

Steve takes a step into the room. “No. I didn’t.” He admits with a shrug. “Then again, I think we’d just be fooling ourselves if we were going to bed in different rooms tonight.”

Taking a seat on the bed, Bucky held his head in his hands and sighed. Steve just knew him too damn well. He looked up at Steve and felt his heart fill with static. 

 

“I’m not a good boyfriend.” Bucky admits at last, when he finds himself at a loss on what to say. 

Steve’s face falls slightly, taking a seat on the side of the bed beside Bucky. “Me either.” Steve admits.

 

Bucky tilts his head and side-eyes Steve. “I’m serious,” Bucky says. “All those girls I took dancin’, I never planned to settle down with them. Maybe because I always had eyes for you.”

Steve shook his head with a soft smile, standing up to turn off the lights in the hall and shutting the door. He took a seat back on the bed, the moonlight illustrating their features. “Peggy Carter was the only woman who looked at me the way I looked at her. But we weren’t meant to be.” He said with a shrug.

 

“So what does that mean?” Bucky asks, as he lays down on one side of the bed.

Steve lies down and rolls onto his side, staring at Bucky’s face. “It means… I’m willing to try.”

 

Bucky rolled his eyes, staring up at Steve. “I’m a wreck.” Bucky admits softly.

Steve smiles. “So am I.”

“I’m a walking disaster.”

“So am I.”

“I’m dangerous.”

“Me too.”

 

“I’m scared to let people in after everyone I’ve lost.” Bucky breathes out.

 

That makes something in Steve’s resolve break, because his eyes get glassy and his frown deepens. “Every night I dream of burying the ones I’ve killed.” Steve whispers.

Bucky’s heart beats heavily in his chest. “Sometimes I think about what would happen if I turned myself into the authorities. Or if I just… died.”

Steve lays down on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “When I woke up in the 21st century, I didn’t eat for a week.”

“I used to hide pieces of metal in my cell when I was with HYDRA. But they always wiped me before I could do anything with them.” Bucky admits, tears streaming down his face. 

 

Steve is crying, too. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

Bucky looks at Steve with a heavy heart, laying his head in the crook of his neck. “I don’t want to forget who you are.”

 

“I wish I kissed you sooner.” Steve says with a morose laugh.

“Sometimes I’m glad HYDRA took me because it meant I’m still with you.” Bucky says at long last.

 

That makes Steve chuckle darkly, as he held Bucky’s metal hand tightly. “I’m not gonna leave you, Buck. Not now, not ever.”

 

“I don’t want to be your boyfriend.” Bucky blurts out, recoiling as Steve tenses up.

He shifts positions so that he’s on top of Steve. “We’re more than that.” He says, kissing Steve softly. “We’re partners.”

“I want to be your terrible, awful, mess of a partner.” Steve whispers into Bucky’s mouth. “In this life, and the next.”

 

Bucky wants that, too.

  
  
  


Steve is already up by the time Bucky rises.  Steve is in the kitchen, drinking a warm cup of coffee. When he spots Bucky take a seat at the breakfast bar, he wordlessly slides over another cup of coffee.

 

Bucky looks at the way the circles under Steve’s eyes appear darker. “Did you get any sleep?” He asks.

Steve shakes his head. “I was thinking about Nat.” He replies.

Bucky smiles sympathetically, as he places his hand on top of Steve’s.

 

“We’ll be okay.” Bucky says with a reassuring smile.

Steve scoffs at the platitude.

Bucky smiles. “Okay. Maybe we won’t be okay. But we’ll get there.”

 

“I hope we will, Buck.”

* * *

 

Natasha’s body lying in a casket was a million different kinds of wrong. She was the very embodiment of living. Her whole body lived and breathed with a soul of a person who would not go down fighting. When she breathed, her lungs heaved to the beat of her heart. She fought people as if she was a ballerina dancing with grace. She handled heavy artillery as if she was throwing balloons filled with air. And when she smiled, she smiled with her whole soul.

Natasha was dead. There was no going two ways about it. She was dead and she wasn’t coming back. For mortals like her, there was no cheating death. There was just death as if it was the end of a paragraph.

 

Steve couldn’t look at the body alone and dragged Bucky to the altar with him. The funeral was in a greenhouse, full of plants and birds and living creatures.

Bucky understands now. Funerals are for the living.

 

Steve can barely look at Natasha. While Tony chose cremation in his will, Natasha’s body was embalmed and ready to be buried. It was the first funeral either of the two attended where the body could be displayed for viewing. Steve’s mother had a closed casket funeral.

 

They take their seats at the front of the service, and the funeral begins.

 

Everyone showed up to Natasha’s funeral, even Thor and all the Guardians. Stephen Strange, Hope Van Dyne, Scott Lang, Valkyrie, T’Challa and Shuri all attended. Nick Fury, Pepper and Morgan Stark, Carol Danvers, Peter Parker, and even Wanda Maximoff. Everyone showed up, and it just made the mood that much more somber. There was not a face that Bucky nor Steve didn’t recognize, which was further testament to the truth that Natasha’s family was the Avengers.

 

Clint was the one who ended up reading the eulogy out, simply because neither Bruce nor Steve could do it. 

He steps up to the speakers’ podium, and a hush falls over the room.

 

“Good morning everyone,” Clint began somberly. “I am Clint Barton, a close friend and teammate of Natasha Romanoff.” 

 

Bucky felt as if it was a little redundant to say such a thing at this point, since everyone in the room knew who he is. And they knew that he was on Vormir when Natasha died.

 

“I’d like to thank all the attendees in the room, especially those who travelled a great distance such as Thor and the Guardians. Natalia Alianova Romanoff was born in 1984 in Stalingrad. She was recruited to the KGB and was indoctrinated into the Red Room Academy at a young age. From there, she rose to prominence as one of the world’s greatest assassins. I was tasked to kill her, but instead I recommended her for employment at S.H.I.E.L.D. From there she defected from her Russian allegiance and became an Avenger. She died in the planet Vormir, giving her life in order to save us all.”

 

The room was quiet and Bucky held onto Steve’s hand tightly. The war was still fresh in everyone’s minds, and it would be that way for many years to come.

“Natasha loved helping people. She loved kids, even if she could never bear her own. She loved doing right by the world and saving the world in the process. If it wasn’t for her, half of us wouldn’t be here today.”

Clint went on to talk about anecdotes from Natasha’s life, and other important memories. At some points he could see Steve shut his eyes tightly, with silent tears streaming down his face.

In some ways, the funeral had rehashed the pain that many of the heroes had tried so hard to keep buried.

 

 

After the funeral, the two of them walked out of the funeral home and into the sidewalk of the road. Both of them were still wearing their suits, as the midday heat began to beat down on them. “Do you have any plans?” Bucky asked Steve. 

 

Steve stared at Bucky curiously. “Of course I don’t have any plans.” He replied.

“It’s just… there’s a place I really want to go and visit.” Bucky admits.

Steve holds out a hand in front of him. “Lead the way.”


	20. this is how we make our peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> home stretch, y'all. expect daily updates from here on out, as i've just got the last chapter to finish up on now :)

It was a thirty minute commute from the New York City Marble Cemetery to Brooklyn. In the many years since Steve had left the city, his love for the New York City Subway never died. He loved the way you could see the skyline as you crossed the East River, a skyline of shifting stories and times.

Bucky sat beside him, holding his hand all throughout the funeral. It was midday on a Wednesday morning, and the subway car was mostly empty. Bucky rested his head on Steve’s shoulder.

 

“Do you remember when we were younger, and we’d ride the subway cars all day long because we had no money to go to the arcade?” Steve whispered, rubbing circles with his thumb on Bucky’s hand.

Bucky smiled as he closed his eyes. “We’d make up stories about the people who rode the trains with us.”

“I wonder what stories they made about us.” Steve murmured.

 

Bucky chuckled quietly, putting on an ostentatious female accent. “One summer I rode the train with two boys who ended up being Captain America and a Soviet Assassin.”

The two of them laugh, basking in the warmth and the quiet creaking of the subway car on the rails.

* * *

 

“Why are we here?” Steve asks hesitantly, as Bucky pushes open the creaky iron gate.

Bucky looks at Steve somberly. “We need to pay our respects.”

 

Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York was several blocks down from where Steve and Bucky grew up as kids. And when Bucky was recovering in Wakanda, they had told him his family’s remains were here, in the exact same cemetery as Steve’s parents were.

They walked quietly down the rows of graves hand in hand, because this one was more personal. It didn’t have the same anger of Natasha’s death that came with a fresh burial, but a foggy sense of forlorn sadness and emptiness the two of them kept inside.

 

And then before they know it, they come face to face with the graves of their families.

On one side of the aisle was Sarah and Joseph Rogers’ graves and on the other was Bucky’s parents and his three siblings. Bucky’s two brothers died in the war not long after, but his sister went on to live a long and fulfilling life. She even lived long enough to take another man’s surname, but died childless.

 

But then something in the corner of Steve’s eyes makes his breath stop short.

“Buck.” Steve says quietly, tugging on Bucky’s sleeve and pointing further down. “Look.”

 

They walked further down and saw two graves staring down at them, side by side. One for Steven Grant Rogers, and one for James Buchanan Barnes.

“They buried us. They buried empty caskets.” Steve said.

Bucky turned around and went back to the burial site of his parents and siblings, examining the date carefully. “We died first.” He whispers.

Steve stays quiet and thinks about that. He knew that Mr. and Mrs. Barnes along with their children didn’t outlive his resurrection, but he never had the bravery to face their graves alone. And besides, he never visited their graves because he knew Bucky’s grave would be there too, and accepting Bucky’s death would be like sentencing his own.

 

Bucky stands by Steve’s side and takes his hand. “Steve, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

 

Steve looks at Bucky.

“Why did you crash into the ice? Aboard the Valkyrie?” Bucky asks Steve.

Steve gulps. “There were bombs on board.”

Bucky frowns. “You couldn’t have jumped out of the plane before you crashed it?”

Steve looks at Bucky. “I just lost you, and I didn’t see a world where I lived and you weren’t with me.” He said, taking Bucky’s hand.

Bucky pulled away in disbelief. “You were going to kill yourself.” Bucky whispered in realization.

Steve smiled wryly. “The only thing I regret was leaving Peggy without that dance.”

“Well, you’ve fixed that too.” Bucky replies, much to Steve’s amusement.

 

Bucky looks on at his family’s graves sadly.

“When I first met the Barneses,” Steve began with a sad smile. “The one thing I remembered most of all was the sheer number of you.”

Bucky shakes his head sadly. “Hard to believe they’re all in the ground but one.”

 

Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand as they walk out of the cemetery. 

“Do you still know your way to our place?” Steve teases, trying to lighten Bucky’s mood. "The Smithsonian wants to make this place like the Anne Frank house or somethin', but for now it's all ours."

Bucky smiles reluctantly, the little bits of brokenness in his heart floating to the surface. “Is the sky blue?”

* * *

 

When Steve was dancing with Peggy Carter in the 1940s, he made sure to leave his compass on the coffee table on his way out. In replacement for the compass that was always in his left pocket instead lay a small, flat key for a third floor Brooklyn studio apartment.

They still knew their way around the neighbourhood, even if there was a new coffee shop and a designer boutique where a deli and newsstand used to be. The shops and architecture may come and go, but the roads would always be the same.

 

Hearing the familiar click of the lock and swinging open the door felt like a time machine being unearthed.

The apartment was bare and dusty, save for the cabinets and countertops.

Bucky took a step into the living room, dragging Steve by the hand.

 

He put his hand on Steve’s waist with a playful smile as they swayed in silence. “Do you remember that one night I went dancing… and when I came home you were upset?” Bucky asked, resting his head on Steve’s shoulder.

Steve smiled warmly, thinking back to that day. “It was one in the morning and you smelled like liquor and woman’s perfume.”

Bucky laughed. “Her name was Eileen. She wore a yellow dress.”

“And I was in the living room sitting on that couch,” Steve said, tilting his head to the left. “And I told you ‘why are you always out dancin’, Buck?” 

Bucky smiled. “And I said, ‘well if you want, you can always come dancing with me.’”

Steve laughed, thinking back to simpler times, but times that were just as hard. A time that made more sense, perhaps. “I was so upset. And then I told you ‘I don’t know how to dance.’”

 

Bucky spun Steve around, dancing to the beat of their hearts. “So I stood up, and shut the curtains,  _ cause the neighbours might suspect something _ . And then I put my hands around your waist and taught you to dance.”

Steve looked out the window and remembered that day vividly. There were no curtains on the windows now, but even if there was he suspected they would have been flung open.

So maybe back then was not simpler times. And the laws of the land certainly didn’t make much sense.

 

Steve stayed quiet and closed his eyes as they danced in silence, the two of them were transported to a different time. 

 

Dancing with Bucky was different to dancing with Peggy. Steve always kept a respectful distance with Peggy, letting her lead the way. He was polite with Peggy in ways that he could have never been polite with Bucky, the familiarity of their actions overwriting formality and decorum. Dancing in Bucky was like fighting in place. It was two headstrong people who had scars of their own. Dancing with Bucky was like staring straight into the jaws of death and knowing you’ll lose a part of yourself along the way.

Steve let silent tears roll down his face. Because he was broken and would still be breaking, but at least Bucky was by his side. At the very least, they’d help each other sweep up the broken pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter steve and bucky discuss why steve didn't just jump off the plane in the first avenger in order to save his life. this conversation was directly lifted from a deleted endgame scene between steve and rhodey where they had the same exact conversation.  
> from that scene we can see that steve's intention was to end his life, overcome with grief from bucky's supposed death.  
> you can watch that deleted scene [here.](https://twitter.com/starksyndrome/status/1155861340721954816?s=20)


	21. future awaits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter... its a little all over the place. in a good way. 2 more to go!

After the funeral, Steve and Bucky stayed in New York for just a little while longer. Some news agencies wanted to do press interviews with them, but they mostly turned them down. Assorted heroes and extended teammates invited them for lunch, but in the end plans had all fallen through. Pepper and Morgan Stark shared the same sentiment, moving into the Malibu home instead of staying at the Stark Tower with enough memories for a lifetime.

 

Steve and Bucky visited Natasha in her grave one more time after the burial, on a quiet Thursday morning when there was no one else around.

Bucky held Steve’s hand in his left and clutched a bouquet of peonies in his right. 

 

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” Steve whispered. He didn’t cry at the funeral, mostly because he didn’t want to give fuel to the reporters that were swarming around the venue. He shook his head in disbelief.

“Her body didn’t even look like her. Her skin was too warm. Her hair was too bright. She was wearing a  _ dress,  _ for fucks sake. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a dress if it wasn’t for a mission.” Steve said quietly, staring down at Natasha’s gravestone.

“Might as well have buried her in S.H.I.E.L.D uniform.” Bucky said with a grimace.

Steve shook his head. “The flowers were all wrong. She had a pollen allergy. She never would’ve wanted sunflowers at her funeral.”

 

After that day, they spent their time wandering parts of Brooklyn and reliving memories that were close to being forgotten. But by the end of their weeklong vacation, it was clear that there was nothing left for them in that city. While one road may be full of memories, they weren’t always pleasant ones.

On their last day in the city, Steve and Bucky sat at an old cafe on the street they grew up in.

 

“I remember this being a print shop.” Bucky said, stirring his cup of coffee.

 

Steve looked out the window and saw a gentle drizzle dousing the New York streets. It had been raining for days. The rain was like an incessant, white noise in the background of their daily activity. It made the skies endlessly grey and their clothes an infinite loop of damp fabric. “Everything’s different now.” Steve said, sitting across from Bucky with a wistful look in his eye.

 

Bucky exhaled. “We’re different, too.”

“Good different or bad different?”

“Different, different. Okay different.” 

“This place isn’t home anymore.” Steve says after a while, his heart feeling faint as soon as the words leave his mouth.

Bucky stops stirring his coffee and looks up to meet Steve’s gaze, but doesn’t say anything. “Too much death?” He asked bluntly.

 

Steve nodded. “Nothing looks the same anymore. We turn a corner and there’s another memory of something I’d rather forget. The chase after Erskine’s serum, the battle of New York and the one that Tony and that spider kid fought, mom’s funeral… the list goes on.”

 

Bucky shrugged. “This place stopped being home a long time ago.”

“Then why do we keep holding on?”

 

Bucky stares out the window and takes a sip of his coffee that had long since gone cold. “I think it’s because…” he trailed off, collecting his thoughts. “I think it’s because there were so many awful things that happened here, but in those awful things there’s like, a split second of laughter, y’know? There’s a funny joke that made you laugh while you were fighting for your life. There’s the smallest bit of joy, and I think that's what we hold on to.”

 

The two New Yorkers looked out onto the street of their childhood, feeling strange and lost at sea. Life had taken a turn, and now they found a home anywhere but in Brooklyn. In the end it broke their hearts to look at their home and instead see a bunch of fragmented memories, but leaving was the only way to put the pieces back together.

* * *

 

“Do you really have to sleep on my shoulder?” Bucky asked with a faux-frown.

Steve pulled a face at Bucky as he blinked drowsily. “Are we there yet?” He asked, pulling himself off of Bucky’s shoulder and looking out the airplane window, showing a bright spectacle of city lights.

Bucky nodded. “Landing at LAX right about now.”

 

Steve stretched upright into his seat and rested his chin on his palm. “Do you want to go out tomorrow night?”

“Out?”

Steve nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. I want to take you on a proper date. Let’s go somewhere fancy.”

“Not the whip and fiddle downing a bucket of beers?” Bucky asked with a raised eyebrow.

Steve shook his head with a fond grin. “I want to take you on a date. A real one. Because we can.”

Bucky looked at Steve’s infectious grin and found himself smiling back. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

 

Steve smiled and bit his lip. “I’ve got something else to ask.”

Bucky raised his eyebrow in query.

 

“Can we go on vacation? Like a real, proper vacation. Let’s go abroad!” Steve exclaimed.

Bucky closed his eyes and let a warm smile spread across his face. “I’d like that. Somewhere in Europe, maybe. Or Asia.”

“We can plan it so we leave in a few months. Maybe even a year from now. We’’ve got time, anyways.”

 

“What about London?” Bucky asked. 

Steve frowned. “You hate London.”

Bucky’s face contorted into a confused expression. “No, I hated London  _ at war.  _ I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine city.”

 

Steve looked at Bucky dubiously.

 

“And…” Bucky looked away. “I’d like to visit the Commandos graves. Pay my respects.”

Steve nodded empathetically. He hadn’t thought of it that way. The Howling Commandos was his team, but he was their captain and they were his cadets. Bucky had a different, more intimate relationship with those men, and it was only right that he said his respects properly.

Steve took his hand in Bucky’s and looked out the airplane window. “London it is, then. In a few months time.”

* * *

 

Bucky dropped the suitcases down on the ground as Steve dragged him into his bedroom with a devilish grin. 

 

“What are we gonna do with the spare room?” Bucky murmured, flopping down onto Steve’s bed with a smile. Steve’s sheets smelled like  _ him _ , like safety and home. He thinks back to other times in his life, and how home has taken on so many different meanings since then.

Steve lay beside Bucky, kissing his cheek indulgently. “I was thinking about turning it into an art studio. It might be good for me to start selling my paintings or to give them to a gallery if they want them.”

Bucky nodded with a smile, taking off his clothes and crawling under the warm duvet. “You’d be the world’s only retired crime fighting oil painter.” 

“Do you still want to get a job?” Steve asked, quirking his eyebrow up.

Bucky chuckled warmly. “No. But I might look into taking some community college classes. Get my degree or something.”

Steve’s eyes softened. When Bucky was drafted, he made a big deal about it since it meant he wouldn’t be able to get his education. Growing up, both his parents didn’t have a degree more than a high school one, and he was determined to change that. But war and conflict and life had other plans for him.

“I think that’s a great idea.” Steve said, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s torso and drifting off to sleep.

 

Bucky smiled, marveling at how he had come to a point in his life where could stop and think about the possibility of a future. A life after the war.

 

That was part of why he was drafted. He was a young, single, jobless American, the perfect fit for the army. He had no affiliations to any organizations, and no wife and kids to come home to. He had entered the war effort against his own will with the belief he was going to die. In the years after, he upbringing was so unorthodox that the word  _ future  _ became obsolete in his vocabulary. There was no future, there was just the next day and the shadow of death.

 

And there he was, with a boy in his arms and a future to explore.

* * *

 

The next day, Bucky was out on a run when he realized someone was following him. He had walked down this path many times, and he knew the footsteps behind him had been hot on his trail. He felt them coming every five or so minutes, just when he thought that they had gone the opposite direction.

 

He walked up to his apartment and sighed. If it was any other day the person following him would have been dead already, but he had just come back from a run and didn’t want to exert himself too much. (Or worse yet, get arrested for assault just to get bailed out by Steve with a strongly worded reprimand by Nick Fury on the phone waiting for him.) And so, Bucky spun on his heel and when he saw what was behind him, he groaned.

 

It was a lonely, weak thing, a large stray dog with big innocent eyes and short blonde fur. And though HYDRA tried to beat the soul out of him, Bucky still had one. And he knew what the right thing to do was.

He turned on his phone and mapped the nearest animal shelter which was luckily just a short ten minute walk away, the stray lapping at his heels every so often. Once he had the directions memorized in his mind, he decided to phone Steve.

 

“Can we reschedule our dinner reservations? I think I might be late.” 

“What do you mean you’ll be late?” Steve asked Bucky over the telephone. He could hear the music that Steve was listening to on his record player in the background.

Bucky bit his lip, as the animal shelter came into the periphery of his vision. “I have to drop something off. I’ll tell you more about it later?” He said, the statement sounding more like a question than a sentence. He hung up the phone before he could hear Steve’s response.

 

He swung the door open, the dog walking beside him. Bucky grinned politely at the receptionist. “Hi,” He said, as she perked her head up. “I’d like to drop off a stray dog I found.”

The receptionist held out some forms and papers for Bucky to fill out while she took the dog in for processing. When he was done filling out the forms, the receptionist still hadn’t returned. He sat patiently in the animal shelter, when one of the dogs caught his eye.

It was a small puppy, no more than a year old. He had apricot brown fur and white patches on his front paws and belly. 

 

Something deep inside Bucky stirred in him, and it had a dangerous request that he so badly wanted to give into.

Later, when the receptionist returned, Bucky handed her the clipboard of forms and looked at the puppy in its cage. “I have a question,” he asked, as the puppy tilted its head. “What’s the adoption procedure to get a dog?”

* * *

 

Steve poked his head out of the spare room when he heard the front door lock click open later in the evening. “What took you so long?” He exclaimed, walking over to meet Bucky at the entrance.

 

Bucky looked at Steve whilst he carried a small, brown puppy in his arms. “Okay, before you get upset…” He began.

Steve’s eyes lit up. “You got a dog?” He asked with a quizzical look on his face.

Bucky nodded solemnly, trying not to look as if he was grinning like a giddy schoolgirl. “Do you remember when you got that stray one summer and you ‘ma told you to kick it out of the house?”

Steve laughed. “I forgot that happened.” He said, petting the puppy gently, as if it were so fragile it could shatter.

“Can we keep him?” Bucky asked Steve.

Steve smiled and kissed Bucky on the cheek. “How could I say no?”


	22. jump in your bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in many ways this chapter is the last, with the chapter i'll be uploading after this the epilogue, of sorts. thanks for sticking with me!

Steve stared at the object that Bucky had thrust in front of him and frowned.

 

Bucky blinked. “You don’t like it?”

Steve’s demeanor immediately changed and he perked up in awareness. “No, no! I love it! It’s beautiful truly.”

 

Bucky smiled, and put the bouquet of flowers into a glass vase, but Steve kept staring at it warily.

It was a large bouquet wrapped in butcher’s paper of baby’s breath, daisies, and sunflowers. The bouquet made Steve smile, thinking of the lengths that Bucky went for him, but that didn’t stop him from frowning at it a tiny bit. 

 

Bucky continued glaring at Steve. “Something is wrong.” He said huskily.

Steve sniffled and wiped at his nose. “Okay, something is wrong.”

Bucky’s mouth dropped in exasperation. “I knew it! You don’t like the bouquet!”

“It’s not that.” Steve said, holding his head in his hands and running his fingers through his hair. “I still have pollen allergies.”

Bucky’s posture sagged as he stared at Steve with wide eyes. “Wait… you still have pollen allergies? Didn’t the serum fix that?’

 

Steve shook his head and sneezed.

 

Bucky’s eyes widened, as he grabbed the bouquet from the vase and chucked it out the window. Steve chuckled. “You didn’t have to do that.” He said.

Bucky rolled his eyes and wrapped his hands around Steve’s waist. “Of course I did. I’ll just get you a succulent, or something.”

 

Steve hummed softly, eyes sparkling as their dog ran playfully around the apartment. “I appreciate the sentiment, though. The flowers were really pretty.”

Bucky smiled. “It’s a big day. One year anniversary of defeating the purple guy.”

 

The two of them took a seat on the couch, Bucky resting his head on Steve’s lap. “How do you feel about tonight?” He asked.

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and slumped his shoulders. “Do we have to go? Can’t we just stay inside and get Chinese takeout?”

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “You  _ have  _ to go. You know how much it’ll mean to Pepper.”

The Stark foundation was holding a charity gala for all the survivors of the war, which was everyone on earth. It was supposed to be a show of solidarity across heroes on the planet that they were still united against the forces of evil, even though the cold reality was that most of the people who participated in the war have gone their separate ways.

 

Steve smiled and played with a lock of Bucky’s hair. “I haven’t seen all of them since Nat’s funeral.”

Bucky raised his hand to meet Steve’s. “I’ll be there.” He replied reassuringly.

Steve scoffed. “Of course you’ll be there. Or else I would have never gone.”

* * *

 

The late Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion had been completely rebuilt and remodeled from the ground up, a glittering spectacle that even the two nonagenarians could appreciate.

Pepper had sent a limousine down to their apartment, and the two of them sat in mostly silence for the forty minute drive.

 

When the car was pulling into the driveway, Steve noticed that Bucky had been fidgeting with the hem of his white gloves for the last few minutes. 

Steve put a hand over them, glancing to the front of the car and making sure the driver’s partition was pulled all the way up. “What’s wrong?” He asked. 

 

Bucky shrugged. “What are we going to tell the guests about us? About me?” He said quietly.

Steve smiled encouragingly. “Don’t worry. Most of them know who you are already.”

“And about us?”

“We don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. And if they ask, we tell them the truth. We’re partners.”

A weight seemed to have lifted off of Bucky’s shoulders as he smiled softly. “And the press?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Fuck the press. They don’t have to know anything about us.”

 

That elicits a small chuckle out of Bucky.

 

Steve smiles, staring at Bucky. Both of them were wearing perfectly tailored suits, with Bucky in a dark navy blue one and Steve in a light grey suit. Bucky had on a pair of white gloves with expertly embroidered lace detailing and his hair was pulled back into a tight half bun. He had been considering cutting it back to how it was styled in the forties, but Steve had coaxed him out of the idea solely for this reason. They made a compromise and Bucky instead opted to go clean shaven, which was a relief for Steve, since he had gotten well tired of getting stubble burn after every time they kissed. (Steve briefly entertained the idea of growing back his beard, and despite Bucky’s enthusiastic support, Steve decided to spare him.)

Bucky looked beautiful, and Steve hates that it took him this long to realize it.

 

Steve steps out of the limousine first, to a clamor of flashing lights and antsy journalists. He was used to being identified as a hero and being idolized over since his army days, but the recent war had catapulted him from vague notoriety to superstardom.

He walks around the other side of the car and opens the door, holding out his hand for Bucky. Bucky rolls his eyes and smirks, taking Steve’s hand in stride.

“Acting like a true gentleman.” Bucky whispered sarcastically into Steve’s ear.

 

Steve smiled, as the two of the walked with arms linked and hands together down the walkway into the Stark mansion.

 

Steve tried to ignore the cacophony of questions that reporters hurled at him.

 

“What have you been up to lately?”

“Any plans to go into philanthropy?”

“Who is that dashing young man on your arm?”

“Is the rumor true? Are you retired?”

“What’s your opinion on being awarded the next Nobel Prize?”

“Do you care to comment on the funeral of Natasha Romanoff?”

“What’s your response to the  _ Times  _ calling you a  _ Russian spy sympathizer _ ?”

“Is the next Captain America really Sam Wilson?”

“What do you think of Doctor Strange’s proposal to use the time stone in order to resurrect Tony Stark?”

 

He kept his head held high and donned a dashing smile, but kept his lips firmly sealed together. He may have been a public figure for longer than the reporters have been alive, but he valued his privacy. And most of all, he valued figuring out his relationship with Bucky in their own time.

* * *

 

The rest of the night passed in a flurry of revelry and festivities. Steve tried to stay off of the centre stage and preferred to sit back and listen to Pepper’s speech from the side lines, but no matter where he went a crowd seemed to follow.

The only consolation was that Bucky knew even less people than he did, which made for a wonderful excuse for the two of them to stay together for the whole night. They hung around each other, because Bucky didn’t know anyone there and Steve would rather die than talk to anyone at the party. By the time the throngs of people had gotten two or more rounds of champagne and alcoholic beverages into their system, they were slightly more tolerable. 

 

As the night wore on, he got weary looking at the crowd. He felt lost without Natasha at his side, being his demure, intimidating right hand man. Nobody wanted to walk up to him and strike up a conversation, either because they still had unresolved tensions with him or because they were just too intimidated. He saw a number of people that he fought alongside at the battlefield, but this was a different kind of battle, one that he couldn’t punch his way through.

He felt lost at sea, socializing with a bunch of high ranking officials and names that were bound to be in the history books one day. Steve knew too well that he was one of them, but he never felt like he belonged. He felt like a third wheel at a party he contributed to making happen.

 

When the day had traversed into night and more alcohol than Steve was comfortable with was being consumed, he held Bucky’s hand and dragged him out into the gardens. It was a cool summer evening, with the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore echoing around them.

 

The two of them found a bench to sit on, and Bucky turned to Steve with a smile. “It was times like this when I wish I could still get drunk.” Bucky remarked.

 

Steve laughed. “It wasn’t that bad.” 

Bucky looked pointedly in Steve’s direction until he finally caved. “Okay!” Steve exclaimed. “It was pretty bad.”

“I think they just wanted us there to prove we were still alive.” Bucky joked morosely. Steve let out a long exhale.

 

“I never want to do that again.” Steve said, taking Bucky’s hand in his and resting his head on his shoulder. “Everyone seems to have forgotten I tried to kill half the people in the room not long ago.”

Bucky sighs. “I still can’t believe you did that for me.”

Steve smiled, and kissed Bucky softly. “I’d have done anything to get you back.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows and kissed Steve’s knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere.” He said quietly.

 

They looked out onto the void of darkness that the ocean had laid in front of them, the salt water lapping at the tips of their shoes.

 

Steve stood up and offered Bucky’s hand. “You wanna take a walk?” He asked.

Bucky grinned. “I don’t think two twenty year olds would rather take a walk on the beach instead of getting drunk and partying.” He replied, taking Steve’s hand as the two of them walked along the shoreline.

“Well, we can’t get drunk and we’re not twenty years old. At least not biologically.”

 

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“We are ninety years old, with the exception of seventy years of sleep.” Steve said with a grin.

 

Bucky rolled his eyes, squeezing Steve’s hand and looking out at the boundless sea. “Best nap of my life.”

Steve smiled. “It was kind of chilly, though.”

Bucky laughed at Steve’s cheesy joke, taking in the ocean air. 

 

Steve smiled to himself, watching as the ocean waves frothed around his shoes. “God, I love the ocean.” He said with a grin. “The ocean, warmth, grilled cheese sandwiches, and you. Those are the things I love.” Steve says with little fanfare. It almost seems like it isn’t a big deal, an open secret that Bucky had known since he saved him from the bullies at school.

Bucky looked at Steve as if he held the secrets to life’s problems inside his eyes. “I have loved you from the moment I was in the womb until my tomb.” He says simply, monotonously, as if he was reading the weather forecast.

And Steve was okay with that. Because they were past grand declarations of love. He suspects he had his fair share of grand declarations and pompous extravaganzas. He wants life to be simple, even if it isn’t necessarily easy.

 

They walk wordlessly along the beach, both of them knowing long before now that they loved each other, but it was different now that it was said.

 

“You’re in love with a wreck, you know. You’re in love with me.” Bucky says, matter of factly.

Steve looks at Bucky, daring him to continue. 

“So, in extension, you’re in love with someone who has to count to sixty before opening their eyes in the morning....” Bucky says, taking in a sharp breath of air.  “You’re in love with someone who double knots their laces. You love million-mile silences. Nightmares made of poison. You love scars from the war years. A century of sadness. Tired morning sun. How could you love any of  _ that _ ?”

 

Steve scoffs and rolls his eyes, and then faltering and looking back at Bucky earnestly. “Because  _ you  _ love someone who can’t sleep through the night. Someone who has outlived destiny. A million bones breaking. Empty bus stops. Solitary existences. You love the war years, because you love me.”

“I don’t think I’m worth all this.” Bucky replies with a shrug. “I’m not a very good person.”

 

“Me either.” Steve retorted.

Bucky sighed. “No. You’re a superhero. You save people. I… I was an assassin. I killed people.”

Steve grimaced. “I killed people too. Either because I saved others or because I couldn’t save them. And, I couldn’t save everyone.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you  _ saved  _ people. I didn’t save anyone. I killed people.” Bucky retorted.

“You saved me.” Steve replies earnestly.

 

Bucky rolls his eyes. 

 

“Seriously!” Steve says. “I was in an unfamiliar world with no friends, no family, no hope. They woke me up to fight another war, and you found me. You  _ saved _ me, Bucky.”

“What if I mess up with  _ this _ ?” Bucky asked, holding their linked hands up between them.

“Wouldn’t be the first time you messed up a relationship.” Steve jokes.

“Ha-ha.” Bucky replies sarcastically.

 

Steve sighs. “Things happen for a reason. You came back here for a reason. You’re here, alive and with me now.”

Bucky’s eyebrows narrow. “So you’re saying that being kidnapped by HYDRA was a good thing?”

“No, oh fuck no!” Steve exclaims. “Being kidnapped by HYDRA is the worst thing a human could endure. My heart breaks for you every single day. It was an awful, terrible, thing.”

Bucky waits for the  _ but _ , that’s bound to come.

“But,” Steve begins. Bucky raises an eyebrow. “even if it was a terrible thing, something beautiful came out of it.”

Bucky nods. “And so what if I mess up?”

 

“It wouldn’t be a tragedy.” Steve simply replies. “Our lives are made of tragedies. Many good men have tried to tell the story of our tragedies. But we have good stories too. And no matter what happens between us, it  _ will  _ be a good story. Because nothing can be worse than our past.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Even if I push you away a million times and make you regret falling in love with me?”

Steve inhales. “I doubt that will happen.” He replies. “But in the event it does, it still wouldn’t be a tragedy. Sure, it wouldn’t be a  _ great  _ story, or an  _ excellent  _ one, but it won’t be a tragedy, either. It will be a good story. Because  _ we _ are good men.”

Bucky nods, because for now, it is enough.

* * *

 

On the car ride back, Steve is resting on Bucky’s shoulder as Bucky whispers in his ear.

“Do you ever miss home?’ Bucky asks. 

 

Steve is about to ask what he means, but he understands the question very plainly.

_ Do you ever miss home, when we were younger and life was complicated, when there were no smartphones and no internet? _

_ Do you ever miss home, your mother, and Sunday mass? _

_ Do you ever miss the way people would whisper about you on the train? Do you miss what people used to think about people like us? _

 

Steve sighs. “I used to miss home. A lot. But I don’t miss it anymore.”

“Why not?” Bucky asks.

“Because… if we were back home, we could have never done this. We could have never been together.” Steve replies simply. The most that they could have hoped for was for Steve to marry Peggy Carter and Bucky to marry a blonde with red lips. They would have been neighbours. They would be happy. They would be friends, but they could have never been any happier than that.

 

Bucky nods. “Yeah, I don’t miss home that much either.”


	23. the start of the line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the soft epilogue.

Back at the Barnes-Rogers residence, sunlight and warmth was filtering in through the curtains on a weekend morning. The air was still and silent, and both Steve and Bucky felt at peace.

 

“What day is it?” Bucky murmured, rousing from his sleep and cuddling closer to Steve.

Steve blinked blearily and turned to check his phone. “It’s Saturday.” He replied.

Bucky closed his eyes and sighed happily. “Do you have anything to do?” He asked.

 

Steve shook his head. “The Museum of Modern Art wants me to paint five more pieces for their Captain America exhibit…” Steve said, but then he shifted so that his eyes met Bucky and his face softened. “But I guess I could postpone that until Monday.”

 

Bucky smiled giddily. “Good.” He replied, wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist. “All I want to do today is to stay in bed and do nothing.”

Steve raised his eyebrow and smirked. “Nothing?” He asked.

Bucky tried to hide the reddening in his cheeks. “Okay, well maybe not  _ nothing _ …” he countered, and at that moment a piercing bark disturbed their gentle silence.

 

Steve groaned. “Why does he keep barking.” He said, lifting his arm off of Bucky’s waist and rubbing at his temples.

Bucky chuckled. “I dunno. Because he’s a  _ dog _ ?” 

“You know what I can’t believe?” Steve asked.

Bucky smiled. “What?”

“I can’t believe that we haven’t named our dog yet. It’s literally been four months since we adopted him!” Steve exclaimed.

Bucky grinned. “You’ve fought aliens from outer space, fell asleep for seventy years,  _ and _ went back in time, and that’s what you can’t believe?”

Steve nodded enthusiastically.

 

Bucky gazed up at Steve, who was making eye contact with him as well. “What are you looking at?” Steve asked Bucky with a sheepish smile.

“You.” Bucky says with a smile and a grin.

“And what do you see?” Steve whispers back.

 

Bucky takes a deep breath of air. “Two battlefields… a lovesick soldier… and seventy years of longing.” He says with a smile.

Steve nods and closes his eyes.

 

“Every time I look into your eyes I see you turning to dust.” Steve whispers suddenly.

Bucky’s breath catches. “I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye.” He says with a sad smile. “It happened so quick.”

 

Steve shakes his head. “How do you tell someone that you’ve loved them their whole life, just when their life is ending?” Steve whispers back.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Well, my life isn’t ending  _ anymore _ …” he trailed off.

Steve smiles. “Bucky Barnes, I have loved you my whole life.”

“Even when I tried to kill you?” Bucky asked dubiously.

“ _ Especially _ when you tried to kill me.” Steve jokes, to which Bucky laughs. “Honestly, I think it was kind of a turn on.”

 

“You’re an idiot.” Bucky said.

Steve smiles. “Yeah, but you’re dating me, so who’s  _ really  _ the idiot?” He joked, and then sprung out of bed, grabbing Bucky by the hand. “C’mon, let’s get out of bed. Staying in bed all day is really bad for your health, you know.” 

Bucky looked at Steve in disbelief.

Steve rolled his eyes. “It’s bad for our health, even if we could jump out of a plane without a parachute and live!” He proclaimed.

“Didn’t you do that once?” 

 

Steve sighed and tugged on Bucky’s arm twice. “Enough talk, let’s go!” He groaned. “I’m hungry!” He exclaimed with a laugh.

Bucky raised his arms in mock surrender. "Fine. I'm getting out of bed." He said, trailing after Steve and into the kitchen.

 

"Did you buy coffee beans?" Bucky asked Steve.

Steve nods, putting the coffee beans into their espresso machine while Bucky began frying eggs. It had become routine. Toast, coffee, eggs, and sometimes bacon if they remembered to buy it from the organic butcher that was just off of Hollywood boulevard.

 

Later, Steve and Bucky are eating their eggs and toast and drinking coffee, and Steve catches Bucky's eye with a smile.

 

"What are you thinking about?" Steve asked, while spreading on a thin layer of jam onto his bread.

Bucky smiled warmly. It was Steve's favourite question to ask. He wanted to know every thought that passed through Bucky's mind, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Steve always wants to know what Bucky's thinking about, and he'll never get tired of it.

"I'm thinking about..." Bucky began, choosing his words carefully. "I'm thinking about how I could do this forever. Just you and me and slightly burnt toast."

Steve's face lit up in shock. "I didn't burn the toast!" He exclaimed.

“Honestly, it’s a little crispy.” Bucky said, grinning in between bites of bread and butter.

* * *

 

"I think the only thing I miss about New York is Central Park." Steve tells Bucky.

Bucky scoffs. "Central Park? I don't think you've ever been there before."

"I have been there! Me and Sam went on a run in Central Park." Steve countered.

Bucky shrugged. "Well, either way you wouldn't be able to go on a run without people starting a stampede around you." 

 

Steve nodded in agreement. They had lived in Los Angeles for a little under a year now, and while they got recognized daily by reporters and the odd passerby, it isn't nearly as bad as what they would have faced in New York.

Bucky smiled triumphantly at Steve while he licked at his strawberry popsicle. It was a clear summer day, the air just getting a little bit crisper with every evening that passes.

 

Steve and Bucky's dog runs over to a nearby bush to sniff at it, halting their stroll through the park. Steve took this as an opportunity to take a seat on the iron bench. "I wish Tony was still alive." He said suddenly.

Bucky exhaled. "I still feel bad for hurting him." He admitted.

Steve closed his eyes and held Bucky's hand. "There was nothing else you could have done. If you didn't fight back, he would have killed you."

Bucky stayed silent, knowing that Steve was right.

They sat down in the park, watching the runners jog by and time pass them slowly, when Steve looked at Bucky suddenly.

 

"Hey, I was wondering something."

Bucky raised his eyebrows. "Nothing good has ever come out of the sentence  _ 'hey, I was wondering something _ '." He joked.

 

Steve chuckled, the blush in his cheeks becoming more prominent. "Did you know same-sex marriage was legal now?" 

That gives Bucky pause. "What?" He says quietly, the smile dissipating from his face.

Steve looked at Bucky. "Did you know that same-sex marriage is legal now?" he repeated slowly.

 

Bucky blinked. "Since when?"

"Just a few years ago."

"Well shit." Bucky replies, his blush matching the same intensity as Steve's with an equally infectious grin.

"They also made it illegal to kick someone out of the army for being gay." Steve said.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding."

Steve smiled. "No, I'm not."

 

Bucky grinned back at Steve. Both of them knew all too well about the fated blue discharge slip that lieutenants issue to men who had been exposed to be in relationships with other men in the infantry. It was neither an honorable discharge nor a dishonorable discharge, but it was treated as a dishonorable discharge by the rest of the men.

 

Steve looked at Bucky, who was still grinning like a fool. Steve put his head on Bucky's shoulder. "I was thinking... maybe in the future we could get married, or something."

Bucky could feel his heartbeat accelerate. "Steve Rogers, I might be an old man from 1940, but I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to get down on one knee for that, and maybe have a ring on you while you’re at it."

 

Steve smiles and raises his eyebrows. "I'm not proposing. Or, actually proposing. I'm pretty sure that you'd punch me in the face for surprising you with a marriage proposal." Steve said with a laugh.

Bucky smiled, tears blurring the corner of his vision. "You know me so well." He replied.

 

"But seriously. If you want to get married, let's do it. I just want to let you know, marriage or no marriage, I'm all in. I want to be with you, Bucky. Until the end of the line."

Bucky blinked back more tears, thinking to another lifetime ago when he said those words to Steve. "You're gonna make me cry in the middle of a park, Stevie."

Steve smiled. "I just don't want to lose you, Buck. Not again. Not after we’ve come so far."

Bucky groaned exasperatedly. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not going anywhere. Ever." He said, planting a kiss on Steve with a soft smile.

 

And no matter how many times he says it, it’s true. He wants this life, and he wants it with Steve. He wants to get hired in a menial job after he gets his degree. He wants to adopt a bouncing baby and carry their child in his arms as Steve cooked dinner. Bucky wants to laugh as they went on movie theatre dates, walks in the park, dinners in London and Paris, all while they left the kids with the babysitters. Raising a testy teenager, crying when they go off to college. Growing old together, remaking the world, because they can. Because HYDRA was an awful, awful thing, but it gave him a blessing. It gave him the opportunity to live in the 21st century. In a time when marriage and children with  _ him  _ and Steve was possible.

 

Bucky isn’t going anywhere, because there’s no place he’d rather be.

* * *

 

Later on, Steve and Bucky are walking back to their apartment hand in hand.

 

"If we're getting married, I only have one condition." Bucky said.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "No sex before marriage?"

Bucky let out a spurt of laughter. "Are you kidding? I can't set a condition that we've already broken."

Steve laughs back. "Okay, fine. What's your condition."

 

"Our name has to be Rogers-Barnes."

"You don't want our future child at the top of the alphabetical list?" Steve asked dubiously.

Bucky closed his eyes and let out a soft chuckle. "No. I want to be Bucky Rogers-Barnes because in this life and the next, Rogers will always come before Barnes." He said earnestly.

 

The two of them rounded the corner as their dog walked up the stairway and right to their apartment door.

 

“Why’d you bring up the subject of marriage anyway?” Bucky asked.

Steve fished his keys out of his pockets and opened the door, giving Bucky another kiss. “I dunno.” Steve replied, flicking on the light switch in their home.

 

“Can’t wait to see what the future has in store, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end of the road is a strange place, but after 4 months, we've made it! thank you to everyone who has read or kudos-ed my lil story, and an especially big thank you to the commenters. 
> 
> stay tuned though, as i'll be uploading a prequel to this work very soon! 
> 
> i hope my words eased some of the pain that endgame caused you :)  
> -selina  
> (twitter: @prophetdjh)


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